RadioWorld was reporting on an open letter to the House Appropriations Committee sent by the independent Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB):

“We adamantly object to the proposal by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages the Voice of America, and their plans to eliminate the VOA Tibetan Radio Service, the entire VOA Cantonese Service, as well as eliminating more than 200 positions and reducing information coverage in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Cuba, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Russian Federation, Turkey and Vietnam,” CUSIB wrote.

“The Voice of America English and Spanish services are also threatened with severe cuts in broadcast operations and staff. The Caucasus region, including Chechnya, and Central Asia are likewise targeted by the BBG’s plan for unprecedented program cuts and reductions.”

CUSIB supports the so-called “surrogate broadcasters” and their special independent role in delivering highly-targeted news to countries without free media. CUSIB does not believe, however, that surrogate broadcasters should be required to represent the United States and explain American policies to foreign audiences. According to CUSIB experts, the effectiveness of surrogate broadcasters depends largely on their editorial independence and being separate from the Voice of America and the U.S. Government.

The claim of equivalency between VOA and the so-called surrogate broadcasters, private entities which are funded by the BBG with U.S. taxpayers’ money, is, however, now being advanced not only by BBG spokespersons but also by the new Voice of America director David Ensor. He announced Tuesday that the VOA news website, voanews.com, will be adding items from the reporting of BBG’s private broadcasters: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), which includes Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, and Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which includes Radio and TV Marti.

This is what one VOA broadcaster said in response to Ensor’s announcement:

“Just a few weeks ago Voice of America Director David Ensor was saying that the VOA site would remain central despite all of the consolidation going on.

So, having mostly eliminated actual voices of VOA correspondents (on “radio” reports we file, even though they contain other audio material of interest to a web user) now the VOA site becomes another outlet for other BBG entities that already are recognized for their superior web operations.

Among other things this is yet another step toward de-boning VOA. Eventually, if the RIFS (Reductions in Force) happen, the VOA newsroom will be as I observed, little more than a production shop for the BBG and ultimately the GNN.” (Global News Network envisioned by former BBG chairman Walter Isaacson who resigned in January).

BBG spokeswoman Letitia King defended the BBG proposal to abolish the Voice of America Cantonese Service and to end VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet, leaving only VOA Tibetan satellite television program which can be easily received by Tibetans living in exile, for example in India, but not easily received by those living in Tibet, where the Chinese authorities prevent individuals from installing private satellite dishes.

This is what BBG spokeswoman Letitia King wrote:

“Tibet and China are crucial target audiences for BBG news and information content. But where there are two BBG broadcasters in the same language, we must seek economies.”

Anything less, she said, would be irresponsible in a time of tight federal budgets. In her response to RadioWorld, Ms. King did not address the issue of the constantly growing BBG bureaucracy, hiring new highly paid BBG officials, their $10,000 bonuses, and a new multi-year $50,000,000 contract with the Gallup Organization to conduct audience research in countries like China where getting accurate audience data is close to impossible because of fear of government repression.

More from BBG spokeswoman Letitia King:

“Both the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia have sent strong programming to Tibetan audiences. Under the FY 2013 budget request, Radio Free Asia would continue its service to Tibet in three dialects via shortwave and satellite audio while the Voice of America would focus on satellite TV and drop radio broadcasts in Tibetan. As part of this media redistribution, RFA would assume VOA’s prime radio transmission hours, ensuring that the people of Tibet continue to have access to U.S. international broadcast news. This decision was informed by field research showing that Tibetan audiences more often access VOA’s news and information via television rather than radio, and that they listen to RFA’s radio broadcasts.”

It’s worth noting that Ms. King refers to “Tibetan audiences,” which can include Tibetan exiles in India, but not specifically to Tibetans living in Tibet. She did not mention a recent National Public Radio report that Tibetan Buddhist monks in Tibet listen secretly to VOA Tibetan radio broadcasts, which the BBG wants to eliminate.

More from BBG spokeswoman Letitia King on the BBG proposal to abolish the VOA Cantonese Service:

“Here RFA would continue its exclusive Cantonese radio broadcasts to Guangdong Province, Hong Kong, Hainan Province and parts of the Guangxi Autonomous Region. VOA’s efforts to reach the increasingly important Chinese audience will focus on enhanced programming in Mandarin via shortwave radio, the Internet, mobile technologies, and direct-to-home satellite TV which does not suffer from jamming. Incidentally, because Cantonese and Mandarin are essentially the same written language, VOA will continue to reach out to Cantonese-speaking audiences through its news websites for Chinese audiences.”

The BBG keeps silent about the Beijing regime’s efforts to suppress the Cantonese language and culture and does not explain how firing VOA Cantonese journalists will allow Voice of America to reach out to Cantonese-speaking audiences.

Ms. King did not elaborate how the requirement of the VOA Charter, a Public Law passed by the U.S. Congress which mandates that the Voice of America will represent significant American viewpoints and discussions and explain U.S. policies to foreign audiences, will now be carried out by surrogate, private broadcasters.

“Thus, the BBG will continue to serve our many audiences in China through a fresh combination of BBG services in a way that meets audience needs, satisfies our requirements as defined by the U.S. Congress, and eliminates duplication to yield savings that can be used for other pressing priorities.”

Letitia King said BBG understands that proposed reductions will cause hardship for parts of the agency and its broadcasters. “In every case, the BBG will do everything possible to ease the impact of reductions on individuals through attrition, buyouts and other avenues.”

###

From: David Ensor
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:28 PM
To: VOA Language Service Chiefs; VOA Language Service Division Directors; VOA Language Programming Directorate; VOA Managing Editors; Matthew Baise
Cc: Steve Redisch; Rebecca McMenamin; Barbara Brady; David Borgida; Richard M. Lobo; Jeffrey Trimble; Jay Tolson

Subject: VOANews.com

Colleagues,

Our English language website-one of the most popular websites offered by U.S. international broadcasting– is going to try something new.

In the next few days, our website will broaden its offering to readers, by adding a few stories each day chosen by VOA web editors from the reporting of our sister news organizations, RFE/RL, RFA, MBN and OCB.  This will enrich our already strong site, and we hope, attract more readers to it, (and also to those of our colleagues, since there will be links).

Here is how it will work:  when the VOA web team identifies a story from-for example RFE– that it would like to use, it will send that story to the relevant VOA personnel to make sure the story is not one that VOA already has from its own reporting, or in which there may be problems. For example, a story on Ukraine would be sent to the VOA Ukrainian Service and to Central News, for vetting.  They will then have about an hour to let the web editor know if:

1.      VOA already has this story so if we’re putting it on our website, we should use our own version,

2.      There may be factual or editorial problems that need to be addressed before the story should be put on our site.

When the web editor does not hear back on either point one or two, the story will go up on the site about an hour after the query.

I want to stress another important point about VOANews.com:
the VOA English language web team is eager to put more original content stories generated by VOA journalists on the site. Reporters working in the language services, and language service chiefs should be on the look-out for stories that break news or offer special insights and that might be of interest to VOA’s English internet public.  If your service breaks a story that might be of interest beyond your audience, please assign someone to make at least a rough English translation and flag it to Central News, and to Matthew Baise and his team.

This will help VOANews.com to continue its growth as a significant global site, one that offers original content, in addition to a presentation of the main stories around the world and about the United States.

David

David Ensor
Director

Voice of America
330 Independence Ave, SW
Washington DC 20237
(202) 203.4500

Critics blame the overall culture of mismanagement and contempt for rank-and-file journalists by a small group of entrenched executives who have just proposed to cut $17 million form the VOA budget. They plan to end VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet, to eliminate the VOA Cantonese Service and to cut more than 200 positions.

Meanwhile, Voice of America broadcasts to Iran and Russia continue to attract negative attention for poor performance and, in the case of the VOA Russian Service, favoring a pro-Kremlin view while ignoring American viewpoints on human rights violations in Russia and Vladimir Putin’s autocratic rule. America’s enemies in Russia, China and Iran have good reasons to cheer. U.S. taxpayers funding pro-Putin VOA programs – Washington Examiner.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is also being criticized for mishandling broadcasting to the Middle East by BBG-run Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa.

A Bloomberg editorial, “U.S. Broadcast for Iran Might Be Free, But Doesn’t Have to Be Cheap: View,” asks: “Programs that go on and on. Shows that lack focus. Graphics and production values that make Iranian state TV look hip by comparison. Why has the U.S.-run Persian News Network been so bad for so long?”

The Bloomberg editorial notes that the Broadcasting Board of Governors just announced a 2013 budget that would cut VOA’s allocation by $17 million. “The network should cancel them [proposed budget cuts] and focus on what it can do well,” the editorial says in reference to the VOA Persian satirical TV program “Parazit.”

The PNN web site is off-putting, the editorial notes. The Bloomberg editorial concludes that “When a well-executed show like ‘Parazit’ can begin to undercut the legitimacy of the Iranian regime, there’s no telling what a superlative network could do.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, the Washington Bureau Chief of Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai, who used to work for the BBG-managed Alhurra TV, wrote in The Huffington Post article, “Alhurra and the Arab Spring,” that “VOA Arabic had a respected Arabic Service, but the Bush administration decided to replace” it with Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, which — he argues — undermined both transparency and accountability.

“There is one thing in common between Congress-funded Arabic TV, Alhurra, and countries of the Arab Spring. Both have unaccountable leaders, who have been in place since forever, and who look like they are staying indefinitely,” the journalist wrote. He also noted that “Since then, the leaders of Alhurra and Sawa, none of them a journalist, have remained in place and have outlasted administrations and Congresses.”

Broadcasting Board of Governors awards 50 million dollar research contract to Gallup while eliminating dozens of overseas broadcasts and over 200 U.S.-based jobs.

Journalists at the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Alhurra TV, Radio Sawa, and Radio and TV Marti are outraged that their parent agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), has awarded a 50 million dollar multi-year audience research contract to Gallup while approving plans for drastic cuts and reduction in broadcasting overseas and for firing over 200 reporters and support staff, the majority of them working for the Voice of America in Washington, DC. The BBG plans to eliminate completely Voice of America radio broadcasts to Tibet and to close down the VOA Cantonese Service which produces both radio and television programs to China.

The BBG awarded the five-year 50 million dollar contract to Gallup on December 6, 2011. Link to: Award Notice, International Audience Research Program (IARP), Solicitation Number: BBG50-S-11-4564-RJ, Broadcasting Board of Governors.

As they were discussing the award of the research contract to Gallup, members of the bipartisan Board were finalizing plans to end or reduce broadcasts and other information programs to Afghanistan, China, Tibet, the Russian Federation including Chechnya, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and several other countries. Most of the cuts affecting over 200 positions target journalists, broadcasters, and support personnel while sparing top BBG executives and managers whose ranks have swelled over the years as they kept eliminating program after program serving foreign audiences.

According to inside sources, not all BBG members voted to approve this contract. Senior Republican member Victor Ashe was believed to be strongly opposed to some of the terms of the Gallup contract and its high cost. Sources told BBG Watch that he fought hard to save the jobs and operations at the Edward R. Murrow Radio Transmitting Station in Greenville, North Carolina but was outvoted in his attempts to save other programs for overseas audiences and American jobs.

Critics who acknowledge the importance of audience research objected to the contract’s exorbitant cost and pointed out that no reliable research can be conducted in the most critical countries such as China, Russia and Iran. Critics also argue that previous BBG-ordered audience surveys in these countries produced highly suspect and skewed results, which the BBG executive staff — consistently rated in official U.S. government employee opinion polls as being last in leadership and knowledge among managers of all federal agencies — then used to justify cuts in programs to China and Russia. Critics also point out that a substantial amount of money from this contract will be paid out to Gallup affiliates and contractors in China and Russia, while the BBG eliminates jobs of Americans working in the United States to bring uncensored news to these and other countries. The Gallup contract was awarded under the chairmanship of Walter Isaacson, a Democrat, who has subsequently resigned. Since the BBG has elected to make only one award, services at non-competitive pricing will be performed.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent Federal entity that is responsible for U.S.-funded non-military international broadcasting. The BBG awarded this contract through an umbrella organization called the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which is headed by President Obama’s appointee Richard M. Lobo. Lobo and his wife have been soliciting money for the Obama reelection campaign. First Lady Michelle Obama has recently visited their home in Florida for a fundraiser event.

According to our sources, BBG and IBB executive staff apparently failed to tell BBG members that one of their previous attempts to reduce radio broadcast hours to Tibet was promptly rejected by members of Congress after a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks staged a silent protest on Capitol Hill in 2007.
Despite their dismal performance ratings, Lobo kept the old management team and approved outstanding performance bonuses of up to $10,000 for some of its key members. They are believed to be responsible for proposing to eliminate jobs of hundreds of BBG journalists over the last several years. They were also responsible for drafting specifications for the 50 million dollar audience research contract that was eventually awarded to Gallup.

While the total cost of the multi-year contract is 50 million dollars, BBG estimated that the total amount of the so-called “Task Orders” to be issued under the contract will fall within the $5M – $10M price range per year. It is anticipated that each contract will have a one year base ordering period with (4) one year option ordering periods. Link to International Audience Research Program (IARP), Solicitation Number: BBG50-S-11-4564-RJ, Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The Board is composed of nine members (currently there are only eight). Eight members (4 Democrats and 4 Republicans) are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The ninth, the Secretary of State, serves ex officio. The Secretary is represented on the Board by the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. That place on the Board is held currently by Ambassador D. Kathleen Stephens, the Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

The independent, nongovernmental Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – www.cusib.org), which last year had opposed a previous BBG effort to end all VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China and to fire 45 journalists, is again protesting against the latest BBG proposed cuts. The BBG’s last year’s proposal for China was overwhelmingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans in House and Senate oversight committees.

After the unveiling of the BBG’s FY2013 Budget Proposal, a CUSIB spokesperson told BBG Watch that “this egregious effort to disappropriate funding from VOA will effectively undermine the purpose of the Congressionally-mandated Public Law 94-350 to inform the people in China who speak Cantonese by providing them with news broadcasts that promote freedom and democracy.
 
“This campaign against Voice of America – during PRC Vice President Xi Jinping’s week-long visit to the United States – is nothing less than another attempt to concede that little by little, the Broadcasting Board of Governors will dismantle America’s commitment to broadcast news from the United States,” a CUSIB spokesperson said.

CUSIB also pointed out that the VOA Tibetan Service was created by an Act of Congress, Public Law 101-246, signed into law on February 16, 1990 “to provide Voice of America Tibetan language programming to the people of Tibet”. The BBG’ FY2013 Budget Proposal undermines the purpose of that Federal as well, a spokesperson said.

In commenting on the 50 million dollar Gallup audience research contract, proposed program cuts and firing of over 200 BBG journalists, the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting spokesperson said:

“It is doubtful that Gallup or any company can successfully conduct a reliable audience research about Voice of America and other US Government-funded broadcasts into countries like Iran, China, Russia and Cuba.  People are too afraid to even admit that they know what these broadcasts are, much less tell a stranger that they are consumers of these news and information programs, which their governments tell them are dangerous and designed to destroy their nations. In fact, whatever audience research results Gallup reports will likely be skewed and counterproductive, i.e. they will lead the BBG to wrong conclusions about these audiences.”

BBG members with IBB Director Richard Lobo and Deputy Director Jeff Trimble

The Broadcasting Board of Governors – International Broadcasting Bureau (BBG/IBB), known to be the worst organization in the Federal Government, added to its reputation on Monday, February 13, 2012 when it announced substantial cuts to its broadcast operations, as part of the administration’s FY2013 budget request to the Congress.
 
A total of 14 out of 43 language operations – around 33% of the Voice of America (VOA) – will be adversely affected.  Some of the services will shut down completely, some will be reduced.  Our focus is on VOA; however, the other entities controlled by the BBG/IBB (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio and TV Marti among them) also face cuts.  The agency claims that there will be reductions in management; but at this juncture it is a claim only, absent hard numbers yet to publicly identify the number of positions and whether or not the position are encumbered by real, live people.
 
You can be assured that the IBB bonus-managers including our “$10,000 Bonus Man” will not be affected.  They are, after all, the architects of the intentional destruction of US international broadcasting.
 
Thankfully, they are not able to take unilateral action.  Much remains in what will be a vigorous and rancorous contest of wills between the bonus-managers and the people involved with protecting US international broadcasting assets and US national interests.
 
What this proposal means is this:
 
This is a clear and unmistakable statement that US international influence is in decline.  The size and scope of the proposed cuts demonstrates that the BBG/IBB intends actions that will accelerate that decline.
 
The BBG/IBB is taking the United States out of the business of direct international broadcasting.  Its primary target is radio, the medium which still commands the largest share of the agency’s audiences – contrary to claims by the agency that people are turning away from radio.  That is pure nonsense.  It remains the primary medium through which people get useful news and information.  It is affordable.  It is accessible.
 
Sources inside the Cohen Building note that David Ensor, the VOA director, says that radio has a very secure place at VOA, that it is not dying by any means and that it won’t be killed before its time. Before its time? Many others had predicted or anticipated the end of radio. They were all wrong.
 
Unfortunately, the agency’s actions speak a whole lot louder than words, even those from Mr. Ensor who has been more candid than most senior officials in his frank assessments of agency operations.  But, it just does not work in this case.  Sustaining a 33% reduction in its primary operations is not a sign of a healthy and robust future for the agency, its employees and the core audiences that rely on VOA broadcasts.
 
If you are a VOA employee, you should feel betrayed.
 
If you are among the billions of people around the world who rely upon radio broadcasts and are without access to the Internet (the BBG/IBB medium of choice), you should feel betrayed.
 
If you are an American taxpayer, you get the trifecta: your tax dollars go to support a failed agency, with a failed strategy and a bunch of bonus-managers who line their pockets while doing their “corporate” thing and pile-driving the agency and its employees right into the ground.
 
Even if the proposed cuts are reversed by the Congress, the damage to the agency’s image and credibility is permanent.  This kind of intentional breach with the agency’s employees, the agency’s mission and global publics is beyond repair.
 
As Secretary of State Clinton rightly observed, “We are losing the information war.”  The BBG/IBB is responsible for losing this war and they are not going to acquire a sudden change in fortune with these reductions or with its sham of a “strategic plan.”
 
This is nothing less than an intentional act of self-destruction.
 
Which reminds us – forget the other load of nonsense about creating a “global news network.”  Global news networks do not abandon known audiences.  Just ask the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians.  They are going at their international broadcasting efforts full bore.
 
What the BBG/IBB intends to do is abandon radio audiences.  These audiences have and will continue to go elsewhere for news and information when abandoned by the BBG/IBB.  They have done it Russia.  And they will continue to do so if the BBG/IBB succeeds in its demolition strategy.
 
In short, the myopic bonus-managers are intentionally creating strategic vacuums, affording elements hostile to US interests to fill the void.  In the globalized environment of the 21st century, the entire world is strategic.  It’s a chess game with serious consequences.  Not manage the chess board and you become outmaneuvered, cornered and run out of options because you don’t have the assets in place to deal with known or emerging threats.
 
That is your BBG/IBB: inept and outmaneuvered by superior skill sets.  Where do those superior skill sets reside?  See above: China, Russia and Iran.
 
 
Let’s briefly examine some of the things we know the agency wants to do, since they reveal the direction of the agency under the BBG/IBB “flim flam strategic plan:”
 
They want $9-million dollars for TV to Egypt.
 
Here we go again with this “Arab Spring” thing.  Here’s the real deal:
 
The “Arab Spring” is a term of art created by Western media.  There is no such thing.  There is something else quite different.  It’s called revolution.  Revolutions tend to be bloody affairs, particularly in the Middle East.  As Senator John Kerry said last year, “It is too early to be doing a victory lap for democracy in the Middle East.”  Why?  Because, these revolutions go their own way, not necessarily the way the United States wishes they would.
 
In Egypt, the military is in charge.  The Egyptian military is not a liberal organization.  It is traditional, conservative.  It will not go quietly into the night and retreat to its barracks.  It is not about to cede power to mobs on the streets of Cairo.  The military gets it where the Western media doesn’t: this is all about power, who loses it and who keeps it.  They intend to keep it and may find themselves working closely with the Muslim Brotherhood, a well-organized fundamentalist organization that has been waiting a very long time for its moment of prominence and power.
 
This is $9-million dollars wasted because the United States has lost its resonance in the Middle East.  The BBG/IBB had ten years (2001-2011) to get its act together and garner support from the “Arab street.”  That is supposedly the purpose behind Radio Sawa and al-Hurra television.  What do the American taxpayers have to show for the millions of dollars invested in these program efforts?
 
Nothing.  
 
That window of opportunity has closed.  No one knows when it will re-open.  Arab publics remain adamant about leveling the playing field with Israel.  If you think you’ve seen bloodshed up to this point that is nothing compared to the next act in this drama; and that is the next act, after the dust settles from the latest round of groups vying for power across the Middle East, across ethnic and religious lines, among the Arab themselves and of course, the Iranians who are intent upon positioning themselves to command hegemony over the Middle East – and that means not just taking the Israelis out of the equation.  It also means establishing dominion over its Arab neighbors.  Remember, the Iranians are not Arabs.  They have a lot to gain by pulling off their intended goals, big time.  They also see this as their moment to reestablish Iran in the image of its ancient Persian empire.
 
Here’s another thing that the BBG/IBB wants:
 
They want to “elevate and expand social media.”
 
Here’s the deal with that:
 
Social chit-chat may get flash mobs, rioters and looters out in the streets, along with anarchists, pie-in-the-sky true believers and other activists.  So what?  It doesn’t mean a thing and it’s all a crock created by Western media.  You know why?
 
Because at the end of the day, social chit-chat does not equate with governance.
 
The next time you are in a plane flying into or out of Washington, DC airspace, take a look down below.  Do you see verdant grasslands stretching out for miles in all directions?  No.  You see what is referred to the megalopolis: miles and miles of urbanity.  So ask yourself some questions:
 
How does all of that work?  How is it all coordinated?  How do you synchronize the movements and needs of society?  How do you provide for the basic necessities of food, clothing and shelter?  In short, how do you maintain civilization without reverting to anarchy?
 
Consider the “Occupy” movement.  There may have been some legitimate issues at the beginning of the undertaking.  But a lot of that got lost when the folks camped out in various cities around the country, including DC.  At the end of the day, what did they contribute to governance?  Not a whole lot.  With regard to DC, they generated a lot of garbage and perhaps helped increase the rodent population (carriers of the plague and other diseases).  But that’s it.  A social experience that devolved into an exercise in collecting trash and eradicating rodents.
 
What do we see from the BBG/IBB in its social media?  Some nice, attractive young woman teaching American slang to Chinese audiences.  Okay, it’s cute, it’s campy.  But at the end of the day, there are about 1.4 billion Chinese in the People’s Republic of China.  What is the contribution to governance?  Not much.  Nothing actually.
 
In things that matter, the BBG/IBB can’t deliver the goods starting with the agency’s mission as codified in the VOA Charter.  Why?  Because it exposes them for all the things they are not doing or have failed miserably in doing.
 
Instead, they try to talk in terms of “supporting freedom and democracy.”  Any organization that initiates an adverse action against 33% of its primary broadcast operations is not in any position to effectively support processes as demanding as “freedom and democracy.”  
 
The BBG/IBB is mouthing words and their actions make them nothing more than mercenary hypocrites.  Remember that “$10,000 Bonus Man” and his cohorts.
 
And forget about this notion that these guys are creating “the world’s leading global news network.”  That is more of the hypocrisy.  The BBG/IBB talks about an audience of 100 million for radio, another 100 million for television and a paltry 10 million for the Internet.  We’re talking a 210 million total out of a world population of 7 billion!  
 
What are these people bragging about?!?
 
These people are not in the business of good governance and delivering an effective mission to justify the tax dollars being used to support this agency.  They are all about putting self-interest as their top priority.  And in doing that, they are destroying the value of the agency’s mission, the work of its employees and surrendering the initiative to other nations or groups with a totally different message than that of the United States.
 
Anyone who is a part of US international broadcasting, anyone who pays for US international broadcasting and anyone who relies upon US international broadcasting should be and has the right to be outraged by the officials of the BBG/IBB responsible for these actions.
 
These characters who fancy themselves as corporatists would likely find themselves fired in the private sector for perpetrating such a fiasco.  
 
The Federalist
February 15, 2012
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Dr. Rudenskiy was hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in 2011 to evaluate the VOA Russian website. In a report, which was not shared with BBG members, Dr. Rudenskiy concluded that the Russian Service had a “pro-Putin bias” and downplayed human rights reporting.

He wrote in his report that “the site provides little if any unique information or bright and perceptive comment, it appears rather mediocre in terms of journalistic quality or design, and it lacks focus on the topics where it potentially could excel.”

Dr. Rudenskiy’s main criticism, however, was directed at what he perceived as a bias in favor of the Kremlin. In his study, he gave several examples of VOA news reports based mostly on Russian official media that lacked an alternative American perspective.

“Vice President’s [Biden] speech in Moscow University , in which he criticized Russia ‘s leadership on democracy and human rights, was clearly downplayed. The report on this event was titled ‘Joe Biden to Moscow Students: Future is Yours’; a headline as cheerful as meaningless, reminding of Soviet newspapers. What is worse, the report failed to mention that Biden spoke about the Khodorkovsky case as an example of Russia ‘s ‘legal nihilism’ – an important fact noted both in Russia and abroad. One might suspect that the omission was deliberate. If so, that could be regarded as a case of ‘pro-Russian’ (or, rather, pro-Putin) bias.”

Dr. Rudenskiy was a Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, which published the following biographical note about him:

Nikolay Rudenskiy is the deputy editor of Grani.Ru (www.grani.ru), an independent online media outlet. Trained as an ethnographer, he is the author of about 40 scholarly publications and more than 100 journalistic commentaries focusing mostly on public issues in today’s Russia, including defending freedom of the press, exposing persecution of the regime’s opponents and other human rights violations, and combating racism and other forms of bigotry. During his fellowship, Rudenskiy plans to compare and contrast various approaches to the issue of hate speech in Russia and the United States.

‘Pro-Putin bias’ Evaluation of VOA Russian Website by Dr. Nikolay Rudenskiy.doc

‘Pro-Putin bias’ Evaluation of VOA Russian Website by Dr. Nikolay Rudenskiy.pdf

BBG executives suppressed Dr. Rudenskiy’s study, as they had tried to suppress a similar study critical of Alhurra TV until they were forced by pressure from Congress to make it public.

Dr. Rudenskiy’s study was identified by Ted Lipien, a former VOA acting associate director, in his op-ed “VOA Harms Putin Opposition in Russia” in The Washington Times. The article focused on a fake interview with a Russian anti-corruption lawyer and opposition leaders Alexei Navalny published by the VOA Russian website. The Russian Service removed the interview and apologized to Navalny who wrote in his Twitter account that “Voice of America has gone nuts” and that all those working there should be let go.

In an attack on Lipien, “VOA Public Relations” posted a comment which questioned the accuracy of his description of Dr. Rudenskiy’s study in his Washington Times op-ed:

“Mr. Lipien misleads his audience when he alleges a ‘pro-Putin’ bias, something which could not be farther from the truth. Mr. Lipien should know well, the agency he so sharply attacks is the one that every year hires dozens of independent analysts to conduct rigorous ‘program reviews’ of every VOA language service. Mr. Lipien both misquotes and takes out of context a single remark by one of those analysts about one particular story.”

Asked for a comment, Mr. Lipien told BBG Watch that American taxpayers and members of Congress should read Dr. Rudenskiy’s entire study of the Voice of America Russian Service and decide for themselves whether their money is spent well and whether it favors more the Kremlin or the pro-democratic and anti-Putin opposition.” Sources told BBG Watch that some of BBG executives who had earlier advised BBG members to withhold the Alhurra study from Congress met behind closed door on Thursday to draft a response to The Washington Times article.

We provide additional quotes from Dr. Rudenskiy’s study:

“There are numerous if minor errors in spelling and punctuation, which cannot possibly be listed.”

“it would seem fair that in news coverage and comment on such issues as YUKOS affair or human rights violations in the North Caucasus some kind of special consideration be given to alternative facts and viewpoints.” [rather than only the Kremlin's viewpoint]

“Now, my impression is that VOA has been too careful in avoiding anything that might look like ‘anti-Russian’ bias.”

“Vice President’s speech in Moscow University , in which he criticized Russia ‘s leadership on democracy and human rights, was clearly downplayed. The report on this event was titled ‘Joe Biden to Moscow Students: Future is Yours’; a headline as cheerful as meaningless, reminding of Soviet newspapers. What is worse, the report failed to mention that Biden spoke about the Khodorkovsky case as an example of Russia ‘s ‘legal nihilism’ – an important fact noted both in Russia and abroad. One might suspect that the omission was deliberate. If so, that could be regarded as a case of ‘pro-Russian’ (or, rather, pro-Putin) bias.”

“Perhaps additional background info, such as Russia’ place in Freedom House international rankings, would have been relevant, too.”

“Overall Impression of Journalistic Quality: Is the journalistic quality of the website at a high professional and informational level?

My answer is ‘sorry but no’. The site provides information of satisfactory quality, but it is mostly derived from other sources. Even the report about American Vice President’s meeting with Russian opposition figures was based on Ekho Moskvy and Gazeta.Ru information (VOA’s own interview with Leonid Gozman was added later.) The selection of topics and timeliness leave much to be desired (see below.) The language, if mostly grammatical, tends to be bland and colorless, which reduces the appeal very much. This applies especially to headlines: new Russian journalism has developed a special culture of catchy and witty headlines, and an advanced user expects to find them. Many photos lack expression and appeal.”

“Much of the content doesn’t seem of interest to the Russian Internet audience.”

“Many ‘political’ pieces are less than inspiring, too. A brief account of the presentation of a new book on Cold War lacks substance.”

“Such examples could be easily multiplied. On the positive side, I would like to mention an excellent article on government corruption in the North Caucasus.”

“Regrettably, some interesting topics were underreported.”

“A brief news item based entirely on Russian sources; an American perspective one could have expected from VOA was lacking completely. The same can be said of the scandal involving Vladimir Putin, Western stars and charity money: VOA’s website failed to provide any information or comment from the American side, missing a good opportunity to raise its profile.”

“As for the ‘market niche’ mentioned in the question, I’m afraid it can hardly be located at the moment.”

“Timeliness … is probably one of the website’s weakest points. As far as I could monitor, all big ongoing stories (Biden’s visit, Japan ‘s disaster) were reported with long delays compared to Russian online media. The piece on Biden’s planned meeting with human rights activists on March 10 was among top news a few hours after the meeting actually took place.”

“On March 12, information on the explosion at a nuclear power plant in Japan , which was distributed in the morning Moscow time, did not appear on the site till evening.”

“On the homepage one can see many headlines of news stories dating from a day or even two days before.”

Usefulness: Does the content provided on this site increase understanding of topics or events, and does it provide a basis for forming opinions, making decisions and rendering judgments?

”My general answer to this one would rather be negative. The site provides quite an amount of diverse information, but not all of it seems relevant to the interests of the audience. A clearer focus on specific issues linked to VOA’s mission is needed. Independent forming of opinions by users could also be encouraged by more perceptive comments by high-level contributors – this is where VOA’s competitive position is rather weak. There are few if any bright columns by good authors; the Poedinok (Single Combat) section is entirely about international politics, doesn’t seem appealing to users and is updated at a slow rate. The Editorial section appears somewhat more useful; I wish it carried more on human rights and democracy in Russia.”

“In my view, the site doesn’t look attractive or contemporary.”

Does this site fill a clear niche that positively distinguishes it from others in the target area? Please explain.

”Based on what I said before, my answer to this question is definitely negative. The site provides little if any unique information or bright and perceptive comment, it appears rather mediocre in terms of journalistic quality or design, and it lacks focus on the topics where it potentially could excel. Reaching somewhat beyond the scope of this evaluation, I talked to several people I know in Moscow ; some of them are professionally involved with online media, others are not, but all are avid Internet users. The result of this informal poll was about as I had anticipated: nearly half of the respondents never heard of the VOA website, others just knew about its existence, and only a couple of media professionals had a more or less clear idea about it. I don’t recall VOA being quoted or referred to in the Russian segment of the Internet including social networks or in offline media. On March 18, I found VOA ranking 219th in the Rambler.ru list of online news sources while, for example, Radio Liberty (not exactly the most popular website) ranked 43d.”

In January 2010, Dr. Rudenskiy delivered a lecture “Shrinking from Brainwashing: The Russian Media’s Response to Political Challenges” at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC.

Link to Video

Shrinking from Brainwashing: The Russian Media’s Response to Political Challenges from National Endowment for Democracy on Vimeo.

Dr. Rudenskiy was hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in 2011 to evaluate the VOA Russian website. In a report, which was not shared with BBG members, Dr. Rudenskiy concluded that the Russian Service had a “pro-Putin bias” and downplayed human rights reporting.

He wrote in his report that “the site provides little if any unique information or bright and perceptive comment, it appears rather mediocre in terms of journalistic quality or design, and it lacks focus on the topics where it potentially could excel.”

Dr. Rudenskiy’s main criticism, however, was directed at what he perceived as a bias in favor of the Kremlin. In his study, he gave several examples of VOA news reports based mostly on Russian official media that lacked an alternative American perspective.

“Vice President’s [Biden] speech in Moscow University , in which he criticized Russia ‘s leadership on democracy and human rights, was clearly downplayed. The report on this event was titled ‘Joe Biden to Moscow Students: Future is Yours’; a headline as cheerful as meaningless, reminding of Soviet newspapers. What is worse, the report failed to mention that Biden spoke about the Khodorkovsky case as an example of Russia ‘s ‘legal nihilism’ – an important fact noted both in Russia and abroad. One might suspect that the omission was deliberate. If so, that could be regarded as a case of ‘pro-Russian’ (or, rather, pro-Putin) bias.”

Dr. Rudenskiy was a Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, which published the following biographical note about him:

Nikolay Rudenskiy is the deputy editor of Grani.Ru (www.grani.ru), an independent online media outlet. Trained as an ethnographer, he is the author of about 40 scholarly publications and more than 100 journalistic commentaries focusing mostly on public issues in today’s Russia, including defending freedom of the press, exposing persecution of the regime’s opponents and other human rights violations, and combating racism and other forms of bigotry. During his fellowship, Rudenskiy plans to compare and contrast various approaches to the issue of hate speech in Russia and the United States.

‘Pro-Putin bias’ Evaluation of VOA Russian Website by Dr. Nikolay Rudenskiy.doc

‘Pro-Putin bias’ Evaluation of VOA Russian Website by Dr. Nikolay Rudenskiy.pdf

BBG executives suppressed Dr. Rudenskiy’s study, as they had tried to suppress a similar study critical of Alhurra TV until they were forced by pressure from Congress to make it public.

Dr. Rudenskiy’s study was identified by Ted Lipien, a former VOA acting associate director, in his op-ed “VOA Harms Putin Opposition in Russia” in The Washington Times. The article focused on a fake interview with a Russian anti-corruption lawyer and opposition leaders Alexei Navalny published by the VOA Russian website. The Russian Service removed the interview and apologized to Navalny who wrote in his Twitter account that “Voice of America has gone nuts” and that all those working there should be let go.

In an attack on Lipien, “VOA Public Relations” posted a comment which questioned the accuracy of his description of Dr. Rudenskiy’s study in his Washington Times op-ed:

“Mr. Lipien misleads his audience when he alleges a ‘pro-Putin’ bias, something which could not be farther from the truth. Mr. Lipien should know well, the agency he so sharply attacks is the one that every year hires dozens of independent analysts to conduct rigorous ‘program reviews’ of every VOA language service. Mr. Lipien both misquotes and takes out of context a single remark by one of those analysts about one particular story.”

Asked for a comment, Mr. Lipien told BBG Watch that American taxpayers and members of Congress should read Dr. Rudenskiy’s entire study of the Voice of America Russian Service and decide for themselves whether their money is spent well and whether it favors more the Kremlin or the pro-democratic and anti-Putin opposition.” Sources told BBG Watch that some of BBG executives who had earlier advised BBG members to withhold the Alhurra study from Congress met behind closed door on Thursday to draft a response to The Washington Times article.

We provide additional quotes from Dr. Rudenskiy’s study:

“There are numerous if minor errors in spelling and punctuation, which cannot possibly be listed.”

“it would seem fair that in news coverage and comment on such issues as YUKOS affair or human rights violations in the North Caucasus some kind of special consideration be given to alternative facts and viewpoints.” [rather than only the Kremlin's viewpoint]

“Now, my impression is that VOA has been too careful in avoiding anything that might look like ‘anti-Russian’ bias.”

“Vice President’s speech in Moscow University , in which he criticized Russia ‘s leadership on democracy and human rights, was clearly downplayed. The report on this event was titled ‘Joe Biden to Moscow Students: Future is Yours’; a headline as cheerful as meaningless, reminding of Soviet newspapers. What is worse, the report failed to mention that Biden spoke about the Khodorkovsky case as an example of Russia ‘s ‘legal nihilism’ – an important fact noted both in Russia and abroad. One might suspect that the omission was deliberate. If so, that could be regarded as a case of ‘pro-Russian’ (or, rather, pro-Putin) bias.”

“Perhaps additional background info, such as Russia’ place in Freedom House international rankings, would have been relevant, too.”

“Overall Impression of Journalistic Quality: Is the journalistic quality of the website at a high professional and informational level?

My answer is ‘sorry but no’. The site provides information of satisfactory quality, but it is mostly derived from other sources. Even the report about American Vice President’s meeting with Russian opposition figures was based on Ekho Moskvy and Gazeta.Ru information (VOA’s own interview with Leonid Gozman was added later.) The selection of topics and timeliness leave much to be desired (see below.) The language, if mostly grammatical, tends to be bland and colorless, which reduces the appeal very much. This applies especially to headlines: new Russian journalism has developed a special culture of catchy and witty headlines, and an advanced user expects to find them. Many photos lack expression and appeal.”

“Much of the content doesn’t seem of interest to the Russian Internet audience.”

“Many ‘political’ pieces are less than inspiring, too. A brief account of the presentation of a new book on Cold War lacks substance.”

“Such examples could be easily multiplied. On the positive side, I would like to mention an excellent article on government corruption in the North Caucasus.”

“Regrettably, some interesting topics were underreported.”

“A brief news item based entirely on Russian sources; an American perspective one could have expected from VOA was lacking completely. The same can be said of the scandal involving Vladimir Putin, Western stars and charity money: VOA’s website failed to provide any information or comment from the American side, missing a good opportunity to raise its profile.”

“As for the ‘market niche’ mentioned in the question, I’m afraid it can hardly be located at the moment.”

“Timeliness … is probably one of the website’s weakest points. As far as I could monitor, all big ongoing stories (Biden’s visit, Japan ‘s disaster) were reported with long delays compared to Russian online media. The piece on Biden’s planned meeting with human rights activists on March 10 was among top news a few hours after the meeting actually took place.”

“On March 12, information on the explosion at a nuclear power plant in Japan , which was distributed in the morning Moscow time, did not appear on the site till evening.”

“On the homepage one can see many headlines of news stories dating from a day or even two days before.”

Usefulness: Does the content provided on this site increase understanding of topics or events, and does it provide a basis for forming opinions, making decisions and rendering judgments?

”My general answer to this one would rather be negative. The site provides quite an amount of diverse information, but not all of it seems relevant to the interests of the audience. A clearer focus on specific issues linked to VOA’s mission is needed. Independent forming of opinions by users could also be encouraged by more perceptive comments by high-level contributors – this is where VOA’s competitive position is rather weak. There are few if any bright columns by good authors; the Poedinok (Single Combat) section is entirely about international politics, doesn’t seem appealing to users and is updated at a slow rate. The Editorial section appears somewhat more useful; I wish it carried more on human rights and democracy in Russia.”

“In my view, the site doesn’t look attractive or contemporary.”

Does this site fill a clear niche that positively distinguishes it from others in the target area? Please explain.

”Based on what I said before, my answer to this question is definitely negative. The site provides little if any unique information or bright and perceptive comment, it appears rather mediocre in terms of journalistic quality or design, and it lacks focus on the topics where it potentially could excel. Reaching somewhat beyond the scope of this evaluation, I talked to several people I know in Moscow ; some of them are professionally involved with online media, others are not, but all are avid Internet users. The result of this informal poll was about as I had anticipated: nearly half of the respondents never heard of the VOA website, others just knew about its existence, and only a couple of media professionals had a more or less clear idea about it. I don’t recall VOA being quoted or referred to in the Russian segment of the Internet including social networks or in offline media. On March 18, I found VOA ranking 219th in the Rambler.ru list of online news sources while, for example, Radio Liberty (not exactly the most popular website) ranked 43d.”

In January 2010, Dr. Rudenskiy delivered a lecture “Shrinking from Brainwashing: The Russian Media’s Response to Political Challenges” at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC.

Link to Video

Shrinking from Brainwashing: The Russian Media’s Response to Political Challenges from National Endowment for Democracy on Vimeo.

In the letter, CUSIB’s co-founders Ann Noonan and Ted Lipien pointed out that CUSIB has been adamantly opposed to the BBG’s plan to end Voice of America radio and TV broadcasts in Cantonese and Mandarin to China. They expressed relief that the BBG has discarded this plan. The BBG was forced to abandon its plan due to a strong bipartisan opposition to it in Congress.

The letter also warns against efforts to undermine independence and specialization of the BBG-managed surrogate broadcasters, which include Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV. CUSIB also opposes BBG plans to de-federalize the Voice of America as leading to weakening its role of representing the voice of the American public to audiences abroad and to limiting public and Congressional oversight of VOA broadcasts.

CUSIB also calls for placing all of U.S. international broadcasting content in public domain, including programming from the surrogate broadcasters which is currently copyrighted despite being funded in full by American taxpayers. CUSIB is opposed to granting the BBG authority to actively distribute its programs in the United States but supports some modifications to the Smith-Mundt Act to clarify that all U.S. international broadcasting content is easily available to anyone in the United States who wants to use it. CUSIB is concerned, however, that active BBG involvement in marketing its programs in the United States would seriously undermine its mission abroad.

CUSIB also urged the BBG to improve its treatment of foreign-born journalists, particularly those employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in the Czech Republic, and called attention to the unfair treatment of contract employees at the Voice of America and the International Broadcasting Bureau in the United States.

CUSIB’s executive director Ann Noonan has been long active in human rights organizations. Ted Lipien is a former acting associate director of the Voice of America who now runs Free Media Online, a media freedom NGO. CUSIB’s Advisory Board includes journalists, human rights activists, media freedom advocates, and former U.S. government officials.

###

Open ‘Thank You’ Letter to Broadcasting Board of Governors

January 17, 2011

Dear Chairman Isaacson and Board Members:

We would like to thank the Broadcasting Board of Governors, especially Chairman Isaacson and Ambassador Ashe, for extending their invitation to allow our Executive Director to attend Friday’s Board Meeting as your guest. As members of a non-governmental organization that supports media freedom and U.S. international broadcasting, we are grateful that the Board is open to consider the views of those of us involved in the pro-democracy, free press, women’s rights, religious freedom and human rights movements here and abroad. In the great spirit of transparency, thank you.

On behalf of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting, we applaud your decision to discard plans to end Voice of America’s Cantonese and Mandarin radio and TV broadcasts. The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting was adamantly opposed to this plan.

We believe in and support the distinct and special missions of both VOA and surrogate broadcasters. We hope that you will carefully consider any future proposal that might impact on the unique role of VOA’s radio and television broadcasts as a powerful voice of the American people and our elected and non-elected representatives and spokesmen. We also hope that the independence of surrogate broadcasting will be preserved. De-federalization of the Voice of America would weaken its pro-human rights impact abroad and make it less representative of the views and values of American citizens. Centralization of management controls over the surrogate broadcasters could hamper their ability to specialize in human rights reporting and divert resources from those who are the most knowledgeable about the countries and regions to which they broadcast. Please consider these issues carefully.

Any reorganization proposals you may be putting forward should not diminish in any way full public ownership, control, and effective oversight over U.S. international broadcasting. Americans and their elective representatives need to have even greater input than now into how American policies, values and opinions are presented abroad. We are concerned that the BBG reorganization plan may limit transparency and accountability.

In support of transparency and openness, the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting advocates for public ownership of all content produced by publicly funded U.S. international broadcasters. We believe strongly that all such content, not just from VOA but also from the surrogate broadcasters, should be in public domain. We urge you to make this change as soon as possible with regard to the surrogate broadcasters. Their output is currently copyrighted even though it is entirely paid for by American taxpayers.

We support efforts to clarify the Smith-Mundt Act to state that anyone in the United States, as well as abroad, is free to use this content free of charge and to make sure that it is made available to those who may want it regardless of where they live.

We are strongly opposed, however, to any active marketing of such content by the Agency within the United States. We believe that this would seriously distract you from your primary mission of providing news to audiences overseas.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting supports BBG journalists and other employees whose hard work and dedication help countless millions of people receive uncensored news. We urge you to address the issue of unequal treatment of foreign workers at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who are denied by a decision of the BBG some of the protections of the Czech labor law. This issue is now before the European Court of Human Rights. We are also concerned that a large number of contract employees at the Voice of America and the International Broadcasting Bureau are denied basic employment benefits and protections.

We would like to invite each of you to visit our website, www.CUSIB.org, and read the letter from one of the world’s top China watchers, Dr. Willy Lam, who wrote about the importance of VOA broadcasts. Please also watch the video we have posted that was recorded by volunteers of Women’s Rights in China at considerable risk to their own lives. This video shows how critical these broadcasts are to the most vulnerable, the most oppressed, and the poorest in the world. Please do not forget about them and about the Internet censorship they face – even as you rightfully try to expand your reach using new media.

It was an honor for our Executive Director to meet the Board Members who attended Friday’s meeting, and we will remain hopeful that you will welcome us to attend your next meeting.

Sincerely,

Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting
Ann Noonan, Executive Director
Ted Lipien, Director
www.cusib.org
contact@cusib.org

[Update: A comment posted by someone claiming close knowledge of the BBG staff charges that BBG Watch sources are wrong and that neither Mr. Trimble, Mr. Sherman, Mr. Lobo nor even the current members of the BBG had anything to do with the plan to end VOA broadcasts to China, which the current Board did submit to Congress and vigorously defended. (BBG Watch has received a copy of a lengthy memo sent to Congress by one of the current BBG members who strongly defends the decision to end VOA broadcasts to China and cites research and analysis from the BBG staff.) The author of the comment to this story, however, puts the entire blame on former VOA Director Dan Austin and one other VOA manager and claims that the BBG staff, presumably that includes Mr. Trimble and Mr. Sherman, had opposed this plan. BBG Watch sources tell a different story and point out that the same two individuals were also responsible for arguing in favor of ending VOA radio and TV broadcasts to Russia in 2008 and for supporting eliminations or reductions in other broadcasting services to countries without free media. BBG Watch sources do concede, however, that former VOA Director Austin did support the China plan.]

[Correction from IBB Director Lobo: BBG Watch has learned that IBB Director Richard Lobo has corrected a mistake in his memo. Paul Kollmer-Dorsey does not have the tile of General Counsel. He is Deputy General Counsel. The General Counsel position has been vacant for some time.]

Jeff Trimble

Sources describe Sherman and Trimble as being primarily responsible for formulating the plan to end VOA broadcasts to China. The plan had generated strong bipartisan opposition in Congress, which forced the BBG to give up its intention to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese and to fire 45 VOA Chinese Branch journalists, most of whom specialize in human rights reporting.

According to BBG Watch sources, Trimble and Sherman are protected by the BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson who wants to de-federalize VOA and Radio and TV Marti and to limit the independence of the BBG-managed surrogate broadcasters: the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Lobo had been appointed to his position by President Obama.

BBG Watch sources describe Trimble and Sherman as the chief authors of the BBG strategic plan which calls for these changes. One source told BBG Watch that not all BBG members supported Sherman’s promotion. BBG Governor Victor Ashe, who has become an outspoken critic of the BBG/IBB management team, was — according to BBG Watch sources — opposed to rewarding Sherman and Trimble with these new positions.

Steven Korn

BBG Watch has also received reliable information that the heads of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) and of Radio Free Asia (RFA), Brian Conniff and Libby Liu, have raised serious reservations about the Sherman-Trimble plan to merge MBN and RFA together with RFE/RL into a large corporate bureaucracy. Critics of the BBG strategic plan point out that the main feature that makes these surrogate broadcasters successful is their administrative and editorial independence, while the BBG strategic plan calls for administrative and editorial centralization and creating a BBG global news network.

The head of RFE/RL Steven Korn, an old friend of Walter Isaacson (they both worked at CNN), is described as the only one supporting the merger without any objections. Sources tell us that Korn has been making controversial personnel changes at RFE/RL designed to protect careers of his favorite subordinates after the proposed merger.

###

From an official IBB announcement:

From: IBB Notices Administration [notices@bbg.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2012 5:58 PM
To: IBB Staff
Subject: Message from the IBB Director

Colleagues:

The merger of the IBB and BBG staffs will become effective on January 15, 2012.
This action reflects the Board’s commitment to streamline and increase the efficiency of agency operations, as called for in the newly adopted 2012-2016 Strategic Plan. The merger will facilitate the development of BBG-wide strategies and objectives, strengthen oversight of program and organizational performance, and enhance collaboration among our Federal and non-Federal entities.

An organizational chart showing the restructured, merged IBB/BBG operation is attached. Here are the key changes:

A new Office of Strategy and Development will lead development and implementation of strategy through coordinated planning, agency-level audience research and impact assessment, program placement, development, and international media training. The Office will work with the broadcast services to align strategy at the Agency and language service levels as well as across entities to enhance performance and meet the goals set by the Strategic Plan. It will incorporate the former BBG Office of Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement, the IBB Office of Marketing and Program Placement, and VOA Business Development. Bruce Sherman will serve as director.

The Office of Performance Review takes on enhanced responsibilities under the continued leadership of Kelu Chao. The Office will continue to conduct VOA and OCB language service research and programming reviews. It will now also be responsible for conducting management analyses of the operational effectiveness of all BBG elements and for coordinating inspections and reviews by the Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office. The Office, together with the performance review elements of the non-Federal entities, will also provide feedback to help shape strategy.

The Office of Communications and External Relations is responsible for communications and outreach activities for the Board and will serve as the Board’s chief advisor for Congressional and external relations. The Office also coordinates communications operations of the BBG’s media networks — VOA, RFE, RFA, MBN, and OCB. The Graphics Unit, under the continued supervision of Tuleda Johnson, will move from the Marketing and Program Placement office to the Communications office. The position of Director of the Office of Communications and External Relations was recently advertised, and I hope shortly to be able to announce the selection of the Director of this office.

The Office of New Media has been renamed the Office of Digital and Design Innovation to better reflect its role in the development and implementation of innovative projects, programs, and services across U.S. international media. The Office will continue to play a key role in expanding the use of the best core technology platforms, as well as assisting entities in executing global digital and brand strategies, but also build out the next generation of digital products that present our content in an increasingly complex media landscape. Rob Bole continues as the Director of this Office.

A Board Operations Staff will be formalized under the direction of the Board Secretary and General Counsel, Paul Kollmer-Dorsey, and will continue to support the Board in its meetings and other operations.

The Secretariat staff and the Analysis and Administration Division will be combined as the Administrative and Secretariat Operations Unit. The Unit will coordinate the development, approval and codification of Agency administrative policies in the form of the Broadcasting Administrative Manual and provide Secretariat services to the BBG, along with the Division’s current functions. Doris Garay-Nellius will head this Unit.

I have designated Jeff Trimble as IBB Deputy Director. Jeff will assist me in overseeing IBB operations, and will carry out special projects at my direction, including the ongoing work to create a BBG global news network, a core element of the new Strategic Plan.

While this merger is a significant step, it is only a part of an ongoing, longer-term restructuring process. In coming months we will continue to study and evaluate this new organization, with an eye toward making further changes to achieve greater efficiencies and otherwise improve our performance. I look forward to your continued cooperation and assistance as we move forward.

Regards,

Dick Lobo
IBB Director

New BBG Organizational Chart

Also see a BBG Watch report on Ashe’s statement.

Statement from BBG Governor Victor H. Ashe

I hope that 2012 sees a new era of employee-management relations for BBG. I feel the Governors are becoming increasingly aware that having 45 percent of all VOA employees as contract employees presents major issues of fairness, concern and accountability. It creates two classes of employees for a single work force.

I hope BBG director Dick Lobo will appoint a broad based committee representing all groups to review the issue and make recommendations to the Board. The BBG governance committee must take a hard look at this. The recent flu shot issue which was favorably resolved highlights how foolish the two classes of employees had become as it made no sense to deny contract employees flu shots while offering them to federal employees all working in the same building and office space. How this ever occurred in the first place surprised me.

Surveys have consistently shown bad morale. We must turn this around. Contract employees are not surveyed by OPM. Recently, IBB sent out a limited survey on the contracts themselves but not on general work place issues. While well intended, that attempt falls short of what is needed to gauge employee thoughts. We must make a New Year’s resolution to do better in this area. We must walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

We must also ring the bell that boorish behavior in the work place will not be tolerated. We must be open and transparent in how we deal with it. I am confident that the new engaged leadership of David Ensor will prevail and create a new climate in this field. He is implementing new procedures.

I felt my visit to the Edward Murrow Transmission facility in Greenville, NC on December 7 was a good one and I learned a lot. I am convinced it is a serious mistake to close this facility which is the only one on American soil where the American government has jurisdiction. The station in the Philippines is barred from transmissions to China due the Philippine government’s reluctance to upset the Chinese government. That could not happen on American territory. 

The Murrow facility has been hidden from public view and I urge it to be more visible. Its name had become Site B which is effectively nameless. However, President Kennedy had participated in 1962 naming it for Edward R Murrow, one of our nation’s most respected newscasters. The signs should be re-erected in North Carolina and the public of Pitt County invited to visit. We should be proud of the Murrow facility.

On December 14, I spent most of the day visiting and meeting employees of MBN in Springfield, VA and was deeply impressed by Brian Conniff and his dedicated staff. They are outstanding. In March the full Board plans to meet there.

BBGWatch.com – December 20, 2011 – Victor Ashe, a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), has called for keeping open the radio broadcasting facility on U.S. territory that is capable of transmitting shortwave radio programs to China. Some Obama Administration officials want to shut down the last remaining U.S.–based international broadcast station located in North Carolina. Ashe also called for urgent reforms in the way the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting operates. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have criticized the BBG for lacking transparency and exercising bad judgement with regard to broadcasting to China.

Victor Ashe’s statement released as a personal wish list for 2012 is unprecedented for a member of the BBG since these presidentially-appointed officials usually do not publicly express their misgivings about how their agency is being managed.

Ashe has become an outspoken critic of the permanent BBG bureaucracy in charge of planning and day-to-day operations of U.S. international broadcasting. He has made his displeasure known by visiting broadcasting services and technical facilities that some of the other BBG members wanted to eliminate based on the recommendations they had received from their executive staff.

It is not clear how the BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson and the other members of the bipartisan board will react to Ashe’s statement. Isaacson, the former Chairman and CEO of CNN, former editor of Time Magazine and the author of the best-selling biography of Steve Jobs, is a Democrat. Ashe, a Republican, was the longest serving mayor of Knoxville and the President to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He had also served as the U.S. Ambassador to Poland from 2004 to 2009.

In his statement, Ashe calls for keeping open the Edward R. Murrow Greenville Transmitting Station in Greenville, North Carolina, which he had recently visited despite objections from some of the BBG executives who want to close it down.

Ashe said in his statement that this facility is the only one on American soil where the U.S. government has jurisdiction. He pointed out that a similar station in the Philippines, operated by the BBG, is barred from transmitting radio programs to China due to the Philippine government’s reluctance to upset the Chinese government. “That could not happen on American territory,” Ashe noted in his statement.

BBG Governor Victor Ashe and VOA Director David Ensor meeting with VOA China Branch employees - BBG photo

Ashe, joined by the Voice of America Director David Ensor, also met last week with broadcasters of the VOA China Branch in Washington, D.C., 45 of whom were at risk of being fired and their radio and television programs terminated. BBG officials wanted to rely only on the Internet to deliver VOA news in Mandarin to China despite the fact that the Chinese government censors the Internet and blocks VOA Chinese websites. BBG officials claimed that the money saved from ending broadcasts and firing journalists would be used to expand online and new media presence in China.

BBG members had initially accepted their staff’s recommendation to end VOA radio and television programs to China on October 1, 2011, but later reversed their decision after a storm of protests by Chinese Americans, human rights organizations, and the action by members of Congress from both parties to block the silencing of broadcasts.

Ashe was reportedly instrumental in getting other BBG members to sign a Certificate of Recognition, which he and Ensor presented last week to the VOA China Branch to mark the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China. Ashe expressed his confidence in Ensor’s leadership.

Earlier, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) public affairs office had refused numerous employee requests to issue a press release about the Capitol Hill reception, hosted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Voice of America (VOA) broadcasting to China. BBG public affairs experts also ignored an unprecendented video statement in support of VOA broadcasting to China recorded by the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Ashe is said to be also concerned by the way of some of the BBG top managers treat their subordinates and by the second-class status of the agency’s full-time contract employees. In his statement, Ashe refers to the government-wide employee surveys conducted by the Office of Personnel Management, in which the BBG has been consistently rated as being among the worst-managed federal agencies.

Ashe’s comment about “boorish behavior in the work place” may be a partial reference to a description used by a yet to be identified top official appointed by the BBG who was said to be discussing his desire to promote his favorite employees and contrasting them with “old white guys.” Sources have told BBG Watch that some BBG members wanted to have the official fired for making that remark but could not get a majority vote. The official is believed to be a former CNN associate of the BBG Chairman. Several former CNN employees have been hired in recent months by the BBG. BBG Watch sources describe Isaacson was well-meaning but too removed and distracted by the promotion of his recently published biography of Steve Jobs.

Ashe’s statement points to one success in his efforts to improve employee morale. Due to his recent intervention, contract employees at the BBG headquarters in Washington, D.C. were able to receive flu immunization shots to limit the risk of infection to the entire workforce. Until Ashe raised this issue in an open meeting, BBG executives were preventing these employees from receiving free flu shots, as well as denying them most other usual employment benefits, which these full time contractors still do not get.

In his statement, Ashe called for action and not just words to improve employee morale. Contract employees represent nearly half of the Voice of America workforce.

Ashe also paid a recent visit to Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa headquarters in Northern Virginia and praised Brian Conniff, President of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. (MBN), and his staff for their dedication in preparing broadcasts to the Middle East.

Ashe is believed to be the only current BBG member who regularly meets with groups of employees and listens to their complaints.

The BBG is likely to face further scrutiny from Congress in 2012. The same BBG executives who wanted to end VOA radio and television broadcasts to China have proposed a merger of Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and MBN into a large corporate bureaucracy and want to de-federalize VOA and Radio and TV Marti.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors encompasses all U.S. civilian international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. The Broadcasting Board of Governors is a bipartisan board comprised of nine members. Eight, no more than four from one party, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the ninth is the Secretary of State, who serves ex officio.

BBG Watch (BBGWatch.com), an independent website managed by former and current BBG employees, has obtained a copy of BBG Governor Ashe’s statement, which we post below.

Statement of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) member Victor H. Ashe

I hope that 2012 sees a new era of employee-management relations for BBG. I feel the Governors are becoming increasingly aware that having 45 percent of all VOA employees as contract employees presents major issues of fairness, concern and accountability. It creates two classes of employees for a single work force.

I hope BBG director Dick Lobo will appoint a broad based committee representing all groups to review the issue and make recommendations to the Board. The BBG governance committee must take a hard look at this. The recent flu shot issue which was favorably resolved highlights how foolish the two classes of employees had become as it made no sense to deny contract employees flu shots while offering them to federal employees all working in the same building and office space. How this ever occurred in the first place surprised me.

Surveys have consistently shown bad morale. We must turn this around. Contract employees are not surveyed by OPM. Recently, IBB sent out a limited survey on the contracts themselves but not on general work place issues. While well intended, that attempt falls short of what is needed to gauge employee thoughts. We must make a New Year’s resolution to do better in this area. We must walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

We must also ring the bell that boorish behavior in the work place will not be tolerated. We must be open and transparent in how we deal with it. I am confident that the new engaged leadership of David Ensor will prevail and create a new climate in this field. He is implementing new procedures.

I felt my visit to the Edward Murrow Transmission facility in Greenville, NC on December 7 was a good one and I learned a lot. I am convinced it is a serious mistake to close this facility which is the only one on American soil where the American government has jurisdiction. The station in the Philippines is barred from transmissions to China due the Philippine government’s reluctance to upset the Chinese government. That could not happen on American territory.

The Murrow facility has been hidden from public view and I urge it to be more visible. Its name had become Site B which is effectively nameless. However, President Kennedy had participated in 1962 naming it for Edward R Murrow, one of our nation’s most respected newscasters. The signs should be re-erected in North Carolina and the public of Pitt County invited to visit. We should be proud of the Murrow facility.

On December 14, I spent most of the day visiting and meeting employees of MBN in Springfield, VA and was deeply impressed by Brian Conniff and his dedicated staff. They are outstanding. In March the full Board plans to meet there.

BBGWatch.com – December 20, 2011 – Victor Ashe, a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), has called for keeping open the radio broadcasting facility on U.S. territory that is capable of transmitting shortwave radio programs to China. Some Obama Administration officials want to shut down the last remaining U.S.–based international broadcast station located in North Carolina. Ashe also called for urgent reforms in the way the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting operates. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have criticized the BBG for lacking transparency and exercising bad judgement with regard to broadcasting to China.

Victor Ashe’s statement released as a personal wish list for 2012 is unprecedented for a member of the BBG since these presidentially-appointed officials usually do not publicly express their misgivings about how their agency is being managed.

Ashe has become an outspoken critic of the permanent BBG bureaucracy in charge of planning and day-to-day operations of U.S. international broadcasting. He has made his displeasure known by visiting broadcasting services and technical facilities that some of the other BBG members wanted to eliminate based on the recommendations they had received from their executive staff.

It is not clear how the BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson and the other members of the bipartisan board will react to Ashe’s statement. Isaacson, the former Chairman and CEO of CNN, former editor of Time Magazine and the author of the best-selling biography of Steve Jobs, is a Democrat. Ashe, a Republican, was the longest serving mayor of Knoxville and the President to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He had also served as the U.S. Ambassador to Poland from 2004 to 2009.

In his statement, Ashe calls for keeping open the Edward R. Murrow Greenville Transmitting Station in Greenville, North Carolina, which he had recently visited despite objections from some of the BBG executives who want to close it down.

Ashe said in his statement that this facility is the only one on American soil where the U.S. government has jurisdiction. He pointed out that a similar station in the Philippines, operated by the BBG, is barred from transmitting radio programs to China due to the Philippine government’s reluctance to upset the Chinese government. “That could not happen on American territory,” Ashe noted in his statement.

BBG Governor Victor Ashe and VOA Director David Ensor meeting with VOA China Branch employees - BBG photo

Ashe, joined by the Voice of America Director David Ensor, also met last week with broadcasters of the VOA China Branch in Washington, D.C., 45 of whom were at risk of being fired and their radio and television programs terminated. BBG officials wanted to rely only on the Internet to deliver VOA news in Mandarin to China despite the fact that the Chinese government censors the Internet and blocks VOA Chinese websites. BBG officials claimed that the money saved from ending broadcasts and firing journalists would be used to expand online and new media presence in China.

BBG members had initially accepted their staff’s recommendation to end VOA radio and television programs to China on October 1, 2011, but later reversed their decision after a storm of protests by Chinese Americans, human rights organizations, and the action by members of Congress from both parties to block the silencing of broadcasts.

Ashe was reportedly instrumental in getting other BBG members to sign a Certificate of Recognition, which he and Ensor presented last week to the VOA China Branch to mark the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China. Ashe expressed his confidence in Ensor’s leadership.

Earlier, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) public affairs office had refused numerous employee requests to issue a press release about the Capitol Hill reception, hosted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Voice of America (VOA) broadcasting to China. BBG public affairs experts also ignored an unprecendented video statement in support of VOA broadcasting to China recorded by the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Ashe is said to be also concerned by the way of some of the BBG top managers treat their subordinates and by the second-class status of the agency’s full-time contract employees. In his statement, Ashe refers to the government-wide employee surveys conducted by the Office of Personnel Management, in which the BBG has been consistently rated as being among the worst-managed federal agencies.

Ashe’s comment about “boorish behavior in the work place” may be a partial reference to a description used by a yet to be identified top official appointed by the BBG who was said to be discussing his desire to promote his favorite employees and contrasting them with “old white guys.” Sources have told BBG Watch that some BBG members wanted to have the official fired for making that remark but could not get a majority vote. The official is believed to be a former CNN associate of the BBG Chairman. Several former CNN employees have been hired in recent months by the BBG. BBG Watch sources describe Isaacson was well-meaning but too removed and distracted by the promotion of his recently published biography of Steve Jobs.

Ashe’s statement points to one success in his efforts to improve employee morale. Due to his recent intervention, contract employees at the BBG headquarters in Washington, D.C. were able to receive flu immunization shots to limit the risk of infection to the entire workforce. Until Ashe raised this issue in an open meeting, BBG executives were preventing these employees from receiving free flu shots, as well as denying them most other usual employment benefits, which these full time contractors still do not get.

In his statement, Ashe called for action and not just words to improve employee morale. Contract employees represent nearly half of the Voice of America workforce.

Ashe also paid a recent visit to Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa headquarters in Northern Virginia and praised Brian Conniff, President of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. (MBN), and his staff for their dedication in preparing broadcasts to the Middle East.

Ashe is believed to be the only current BBG member who regularly meets with groups of employees and listens to their complaints.

The BBG is likely to face further scrutiny from Congress in 2012. The same BBG executives who wanted to end VOA radio and television broadcasts to China have proposed a merger of Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and MBN into a large corporate bureaucracy and want to de-federalize VOA and Radio and TV Marti.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors encompasses all U.S. civilian international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. The Broadcasting Board of Governors is a bipartisan board comprised of nine members. Eight, no more than four from one party, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the ninth is the Secretary of State, who serves ex officio.

BBG Watch (BBGWatch.com), an independent website managed by former and current BBG employees, has obtained a copy of BBG Governor Ashe’s statement, which we post below.

Statement of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) member Victor H. Ashe

I hope that 2012 sees a new era of employee-management relations for BBG. I feel the Governors are becoming increasingly aware that having 45 percent of all VOA employees as contract employees presents major issues of fairness, concern and accountability. It creates two classes of employees for a single work force.

I hope BBG director Dick Lobo will appoint a broad based committee representing all groups to review the issue and make recommendations to the Board. The BBG governance committee must take a hard look at this. The recent flu shot issue which was favorably resolved highlights how foolish the two classes of employees had become as it made no sense to deny contract employees flu shots while offering them to federal employees all working in the same building and office space. How this ever occurred in the first place surprised me.

Surveys have consistently shown bad morale. We must turn this around. Contract employees are not surveyed by OPM. Recently, IBB sent out a limited survey on the contracts themselves but not on general work place issues. While well intended, that attempt falls short of what is needed to gauge employee thoughts. We must make a New Year’s resolution to do better in this area. We must walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

We must also ring the bell that boorish behavior in the work place will not be tolerated. We must be open and transparent in how we deal with it. I am confident that the new engaged leadership of David Ensor will prevail and create a new climate in this field. He is implementing new procedures.

I felt my visit to the Edward Murrow Transmission facility in Greenville, NC on December 7 was a good one and I learned a lot. I am convinced it is a serious mistake to close this facility which is the only one on American soil where the American government has jurisdiction. The station in the Philippines is barred from transmissions to China due the Philippine government’s reluctance to upset the Chinese government. That could not happen on American territory.

The Murrow facility has been hidden from public view and I urge it to be more visible. Its name had become Site B which is effectively nameless. However, President Kennedy had participated in 1962 naming it for Edward R Murrow, one of our nation’s most respected newscasters. The signs should be re-erected in North Carolina and the public of Pitt County invited to visit. We should be proud of the Murrow facility.

On December 14, I spent most of the day visiting and meeting employees of MBN in Springfield, VA and was deeply impressed by Brian Conniff and his dedicated staff. They are outstanding. In March the full Board plans to meet there.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors announced that BBG Governor Victor Ashe toured the last remaining U.S. –based international broadcast facility recently, noting the historical significance of the base which is named for an icon of U.S. international broadcasting. BBG Watch reported earlier that the BBG executive staff tried to discourage Ashe from visiting the Edward R. Murrow Greenville Transmitting Station in North Carolina. BBG executives want to close the station down as part of their plan to limit Voice of America radio broadcasting, eliminate several language services, and to switch most of the remaining ones to Internet-only program delivery.

BBG announcement notes that during his December 8 visit to the Edward R. Murrow Greenville Transmitting Station in North Carolina, Ashe met with employees and discussed the installation’s mission, which includes shortwave broadcasting to Latin America, Cuba, the Caribbean, and Africa.

Ashe has been meeting with BBG employee and raising employee morale issues in open BBG meetings to the dismay of BBG executives. They have been rated in government-wide employee surveys as being among the worst managers in the federal government.

Ashe has also raised questions about BBG staff’s plans to privatize Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti and to merge Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa into a large corporate bureaucracy. A former Republican mayor of Knoxville and former U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Ashe is known to be concerned about the BBG staff’s eagerness to eliminate radio and television VOA broadcasting services and jobs in the United States.

BBG announcement states that Ashe said he was impressed with the professionalism and dedication of the staff of the transmitting station in North Carolina, particularly their ability to maintain aged broadcast transmitters and related equipment.

While BBG public affairs staffers tried hard to focus the announcement on the historical aspects of the visit, sources told BBG Watch that Ashe also said that employees of the Edward R. Murrow Greenville Transmitting Station are “performing a valuable service.” Ashe also called for using the official name of the station rather than referring to it as a transmitting facility. Edward R. Murrow, a famous broadcast journalist during World War II and post-war director of the United States Information Agency, was a native of North Carolina.

Sources also told BBG Watch that Ashe is concerned how BBG executives deal with the American public and members of Congress. While BBG public relations staffers posted online a short announcement about Ashe’s visit to North Carolina, they refused to issue a press release about a Capitol Hill reception to mark the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China, which was hosted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.

The BBG wanted to end radio and television broadcasts to China but their plan was blocked in Congress thanks to an amendment introduced by Rep. Rohrabacher. His amendment received full bipartisan support. Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, attended the reception and recorded a special video message in support of VOA broadcasting to China.

Link to the video of the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, congratulating the Voice of America (VOA) on the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China

On Dec. 6, 2011, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher hosted a large reception on Capitol Hill to mark the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China. He had earlier introduced an amendment that saved VOA radio and TV programs to China. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also attended the reception as did Congressman Chris Smith, also a strong supporter of VOA and an outspoken critic of human rights abuses by the Chinese communist regime. Ros-Lehtinen, Rohrabacher, and Smith thanked VOA China Branch employees for their work.

No current BBG member attended the reception, although all of them had been invited. A former Republican BBG member, Blanquita Cullum, who had published an op-ed in The Washington Times critical of the decision to end VOA broadcasts to China, spoke at the reception about the importance of VOA radio for the victims of human rights abuses in nations governed by dictatorial and authoritarian regimes and for those who experience severe economic hardships and political upheavals.

Sources have told BBG Watch that BBG’s Republican member Ambassador Victor Ashe was planning to attend the Capitol Hill reception but was travelling to Greenville, North Carolina, to visit the BBG radio transmitting station, which BBG executives and some of the other BBG members want to close down as part of their plan to privatize the Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti and to merge Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV into a large corporate bureaucracy.

Critics point out that this large bureaucracy would still be funded by American taxpayers but run by some of the current BBG executives with less oversight from Congress and less independence for the so-called “surrogate broadcasters” such as RFA and RFE/RL than under the current arrangement. VOA and Radio and TV Marti would lose their semi-official status, which is feared by authoritarian regimes such as the one in Cuba, but would also continue to be funded by American taxpayers.

Ashe was quoted as saying that his trip to Greenville was very productive and that the transmitting facility is performing a “valuable service.” BBG executives had tried to discourage him from going on this trip. The executive staff had advised BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson, a former CNN executive and author of the best selling biography of Steve Jobs, that Congress would not object to the plan to end VOA broadcasting to China. BBG members seem now split on the wisdom of the advice they have been getting from their staffers.

Ambassador Ashe has been lately critical of BBG plans to reduce VOA radio and television broadcasting to countries without free media. He has been meeting also with groups of employees and raising employee morale issues.

Sources also told BBG Watch that Michael Meehan, one of BBG’s Democratic members, was also planning to attend the reception. The BBG was represented by Jeff Trimble, the Deputy Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), who — according to BBG Watch sources — had earlier advised BBG members to end VOA radio and TV transmissions to China, as well as to Russia in 2008. VOA broadcasts to Russia were terminated and never resumed. Sources also told BBG Watch that VOA Director David Ensor was travelling abroad and could not attend the Capitol Hill reception. Neither VOA nor BBG has issued a press release to mark the 70th anniversary of broadcasting to China or to highlight the unprecedented expression of support for VOA Chinese radio and TV programs from the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and other members of Congress.

Visit link:
Chairman of House Committee on Foreign Affairs says Chinese people need Voice of America broadcasts

Link to the video of the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, congratulating the Voice of America (VOA) on the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China

On Dec. 6, 2011, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher hosted a large reception on Capitol Hill to mark the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China. He had earlier introduced an amendment that saved VOA radio and TV programs to China. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also attended the reception as did Congressman Chris Smith, also a strong supporter of VOA and an outspoken critic of human rights abuses by the Chinese communist regime. Ros-Lehtinen, Rohrabacher, and Smith thanked VOA China Branch employees for their work.

No current BBG member attended the reception, although all of them had been invited. A former Republican BBG member, Blanquita Cullum, who had published an op-ed in The Washington Times critical of the decision to end VOA broadcasts to China, spoke at the reception about the importance of VOA radio for the victims of human rights abuses in nations governed by dictatorial and authoritarian regimes and for those who experience severe economic hardships and political upheavals.

Sources have told BBG Watch that BBG’s Republican member Ambassador Victor Ashe was planning to attend the Capitol Hill reception but was travelling to Greenville, North Carolina, to visit the BBG radio transmitting station, which BBG executives and some of the other BBG members want to close down as part of their plan to privatize the Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti and to merge Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV into a large corporate bureaucracy.

Critics point out that this large bureaucracy would still be funded by American taxpayers but run by some of the current BBG executives with less oversight from Congress and less independence for the so-called “surrogate broadcasters” such as RFA and RFE/RL than under the current arrangement. VOA and Radio and TV Marti would lose their semi-official status, which is feared by authoritarian regimes such as the one in Cuba, but would also continue to be funded by American taxpayers.

Ashe was quoted as saying that his trip to Greenville was very productive and that the transmitting facility is performing a “valuable service.” BBG executives had tried to discourage him from going on this trip. The executive staff had advised BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson, a former CNN executive and author of the best selling biography of Steve Jobs, that Congress would not object to the plan to end VOA broadcasting to China. BBG members seem now split on the wisdom of the advice they have been getting from their staffers.

Ambassador Ashe has been lately critical of BBG plans to reduce VOA radio and television broadcasting to countries without free media. He has been meeting also with groups of employees and raising employee morale issues.

Sources also told BBG Watch that Michael Meehan, one of BBG’s Democratic members, was also planning to attend the reception. The BBG was represented by Jeff Trimble, the Deputy Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), who — according to BBG Watch sources — had earlier advised BBG members to end VOA radio and TV transmissions to China, as well as to Russia in 2008. VOA broadcasts to Russia were terminated and never resumed. Sources also told BBG Watch that VOA Director David Ensor was travelling abroad and could not attend the Capitol Hill reception. Neither VOA nor BBG has issued a press release to mark the 70th anniversary of broadcasting to China or to highlight the unprecedented expression of support for VOA Chinese radio and TV programs from the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and other members of Congress.

If it were not for Congressman Rohrabacher and other members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, VOA would not be able to celebrate this anniversary. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency which manages VOA, wanted to terminate all VOA radio and television broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese as of October 1, 2011, which happened to be the anniversary of the founding of communist China. On this year’s Valentine’s Day, BBG managers informed 45 VOA China Branch journalists and broadcasters, most of whom specialize in human rights reporting, that their programs and their jobs would be eliminated. This announcement caused an outrage among human rights activists, free media advocates, and members of Congress. An amendment to save VOA broadcasts to China, introduced by Congressman Rohrabacher, received broad bipartisan support and blocked BBG from implementing its plan. Both Democrats and Republicans criticized the bipartisan members of the BBG for lacking transparency and for exercising poor judgement.

BBG members, who are both new and inexperienced and work only part time, followed the advice of their executive staff and were surprised by the strength of the opposition to their plan. Some BBG members are now beginning to question the wisdom of another plan, also developed by the BBG executive staff, that proposes to merge Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa into a large corporate entity. BBG officials also proposed to de-federalize and privatize Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti. Under the chairmanship of Walter Isaacson, a former CNN executive and author of the best selling biography of Steve Jobs, several top BBG positions have already been filled by former CNN employees, one of who bragged in an email to a BBG member about displacing “old white guys,” sources say.

These plans are likely to encounter strong opposition in Congress. Critics claim that the proposal would destroy the traditional dual arrangement of the Voice of America and the surrogate broadcasters having different roles and missions. This arrangement, supported by Congress and numerous U.S. administrations, has been very successful due to the independence and specialization of the surrogate broadcasters and the semi-official status of the Voice of America. Centralization and privatization being proposed by the BBG executive staff would undermine both elements on which the effectiveness of U.S. international broadcasting depends and would create a huge, costly, and unaccountable corporate bureaucracy, critics charge.

Members of the BBG were invited to the Tuesday reception on Capitol Hill despite their earlier vote to end VOA radio and TV programs to China.

“If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security, privatization may not be feasible,” – Deloitte

“If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security, privatization may not be feasible,” is a conclusion of a consolidation study done by Deloitte, but the consulting firm recommends a quick action on the BBG plan to merge grantee broadcasters. Free Media Online has obtained a copy of the Grantee Merger Assessment done for the Broadcasting Board of Governors by Deloitte. It was announced at today’s BBG open meeting that the report will be posted on the BBG Strategy website. The report makes references to “language duplication” between VOA and the Grantees, which implies that there are no differences in mission between VOA and the Grantees. If VOA and the Grantees have different missions, then “language duplication” is a non-issue. If they have the same mission — which evidently they do not — then the logical step would be to combine VOA and the Grantees. Deloitte, however, did discover that VOA broadcasts may have a national security and foreign policy mission and is advocating a further study of the BBG’s de-Federalization proposal.

Here are some of the main elements of the report:

Key Findings:

Today RFE/RL, RFA and MBN are three separate private 501(c)(3) organizations with combined resources of approximately $240 million and approximately 2,000 full time employees and contractors. All have a common mission to act as a surrogate media outlet in countries that do not have an open media environment; additionally, unlike RFE/RL and RFA, MBN is charged with providing context about America, its people, and policies.

Aside from Arabic services to Iraq, there is no overlap in language services among the Grantees, or in bureau locations. With just a merger of the Grantees, there is no potential to eliminate duplication of language services beyond that already planned. A combined entity framework can set the foundation for achieving substantial synergies with respect to the large overlap with VOA language services, which is unanimously supported by all Grantee Presidents.

There are several potential benefits of a merger of the three grantee corporations:

- It would serve as a first step in the execution of the Board’s Strategic Plan that calls for consolidating and streamlining management and administrative infrastructure. A merger would create a single grantee management team which would facilitate coordination with the BBG in pursuit of its strategic objectives.

- It creates more financial transparency and demonstrates to stakeholders that BBG leadership is committed to allocating resources as efficiently as possible and eliminating waste – potentially garnering support and trust.

- It creates an enforceable structure for more formalized content sharing, advancing the Board’s strategy to harness original reporting from across the language services to create a global news service with rich programming.

- It creates resource savings over time with the elimination of duplicative administrative and technical infrastructures and pooled purchasing power (e.g., for equipment, services, and insurance). This is a key benefit in our current economic environment.

- Positive reaction from Congress if new services, technologies and broadcast medium can be achieved without an increase to the top line.

- Annual run rate savings of $9M, or about 10% can be achieved on approximately $90M of addressable spend which is approximately 38% of the aggregate Grantee budget.

Savings could expand to nearly $14M annually with aggressive facilities consolidation.

Risks of integrating the Grantee corporations include:

- Possible negative reaction from Congress if a merger of the Grantees impedes the flow of content to audiences.

- Uncertain result of merging a partially unionized workforce with non-unionized staff.

- A potentially broader impact of digital and physical security threats in a merged environment if not mitigated.

- Potential disruption to current foreign business licenses and relationships in host countries.

Over five years, the cumulative net savings from merging the Grantee organizations is estimated to be approximately $30M to $40M. There are cumulative savings of $35M to $50M available with one-time costs of $8M to $12M. The savings result from a small headcount reduction of approximately 45-50 resources, plus non-headcount savings related to sourcing efficiencies, and facilities and technology infrastructure consolidation. Longer term, there are opportunities for additional headcount reduction if facilities are more aggressively consolidated.

Conclusions:

Deloitte believes that the merging of the Grantees does have merit, and does make sense strategically and economically. We heard in numerous discussions with leaders across the Grantees that current structure is a product of the evolution of the Agency, is not ideal, and would not be the logical approach if one were starting fresh. We agree with that perspective. The current siloed structure is not an optimal foundation for the new strategic direction envisioned by the Board.

From an operational perspective, we see no roadblocks that cannot be overcome. The vast majority (around 75%) of the resources of the Grantees are devoted to content and programming, so their day to day roles will not change. Merging the administrative processes, policies, and supporting systems will be no more complicated here than in any other merger of a similar scale.

In the current economic environment, continuing to operate three separate organizations with redundant executive management teams, administrative infrastructures, audits, etc. seems to be an inefficient use of taxpayer resources. The potential annual savings of $9M to $14M could be redeployed toward journalistic initiatives that advance the Board strategic vision.

As with any merger there are risks associated with the potential decline in employee morale. These can be mitigated by swift decision-making and a strong change management program.

Delaying a decision about the path forward will create uncertainty which can dampen employee morale. In addition, delays will stall the advancement of the Board’s strategic plan and cause the organization to miss out on significant potential savings.

Recommendations and Next Steps:

We recommend that the Board approve the merger of the Grantees, and proceed with the design of the new organization and the implementation planning. Based on a typical merger timeframe of about 6 months from a decision, we believe that the Board should target a “Day 1” in July 2012.

To pursue the larger savings available by reducing duplication of language services, as noted earlier and broadly supported by Grantee leadership, we recommend commencing a study on the feasibility, benefits and costs of VOA/OCB de-federalization, reportable at the Board’s March 2012 meeting to explore 3 items:

1. The “quick hit” opportunities available from partially integrating some VOA/OCB operations into the Grantee structure without de-federalization. The objective of this study would be to identify initiatives that could be implemented in parallel with the Day
1 of the Grantee merger in July 2012.

2. The next tranche of opportunities that would become feasible in FY13 without de-federalization.

3. The feasibility of VOA/OCB de-federalization, including benefits, risks, and financial implications.

Key Principles:

There were several key principles that were consistently articulated throughout the visioning discussions with the Grantees. These are things that all believed should be the ‘guard rails’ of any potential integration.

There should be no change in the journalistic mission of the organizations – the current markets and audiences should continue to be served with the content appropriate for them.

The existing market-facing brands should remain intact as they are critical to success. The relationship between the brands and the grantee entity is different across the three organizations. For MBN, the brands (Alhurra, Radio Sawa, Afia Darfur) are the externally known identities, while for Radio Free Asia the brand and the organization are one in the same across its market. RFE/RL has individual brands by service that will be critical to maintain.

The new organization should maintain an entrepreneurial spirit and ability to remain nimble; avoiding bureaucracy.

Risks:

There are five primary potential risks that were identified from discussions with the Grantees.

Congressional reaction:

There is uncertainty as to reaction from Congress. The proposed merger has positive actions in doing more with less, but has the potential to disrupt content if not managed carefully.

Cultural differences:

The three organizations have cultural differences. MBN is a primarily a television focused entity and produces content in a single language , Arabic. RFE/RL and RFA are primarily radio entities (though expanding into other media) and produce content in many languages. Because RFA is much smaller in employee count and budget, it sees itself as a more tightly knit community than the others. It also operates with the least sophisticated resources of the three (e.g. production facilities, technical resources). Bringing together the cultures of these three organizations will require a focused change management effort. Mergers bring uncertainty and change, so there is a possibility that employee morale could suffer resulting in an increased risk of employee turnover. Decision-making delays can exacerbate this situation; employees who are uncertain of the path forward and their role (or lack thereof) in the new organization may be more likely to seek other opportunities.

Unions:

A significant portion of RFA’s workforce is unionized, while RFE/RL has 8 unionized employees and MBN has no unions. A deliberate plan is required to ensure that all parties’ interests are represented in the planning.

Security:

Because of the nature of their work, each organization comes under threat (both physical and digital). Today, when one organization is attacked, the others are unaffected. If the organizations are combined, a threat could affect the scope of the entire operation. For example, if systems are combined and there is a digital attack inspired by RFA’s content, programming and employees in the Middle East and Europe could be affected as well. That said, there are mitigation strategies that could be employed to address this risk.

Staff Reductions:

Management Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 13-14 high-level management staff positions, including two Presidents, several VPs and other management support roles. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new leadership structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

Finance/Admin Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 14-15 finance/admin staff positions, including finance management, accounting, and procurement personnel. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new finance organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

HR Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation is not estimated to reduce overall headcount for HR in the near term, however would likely result in a different mix of positions required -eliminating for example two Director Roles, but increasing the staff at various locations should no facility changes be assumed. The consolidation is likely to require job roles and benefits plans to be redefined and broadly, and HR policy will need to be revisited. If facilities consolidation occurs, there may be an opportunity to reduce 1-2 HR positions.

Facilities Staff Reductions – Real estate consolidation could yield approximately 3-5 facilities staff headcount reductions. In the near term for example, savings would result from offices in the Washington, DC metro area being consolidated. These savings could be realized quickly if existing space is subleased and facilities consolidation begins upon execution of the merger. If facilities consolidation is delayed until the nearest term leases expire, savings will begin to be realized in FY14 and fully realized in FY15.

Communications – Grantee consolidation could eliminate 2-3 communications positions. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new communications organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

Technology Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 13 technology staff positions . These savings could begin to be realized as soon as the new technology organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging. The location/facilities strategy will affect the degree of opportunity in this area. On-site technical resources are required in facilities where production takes place and where there are significant groups of users. Because of the 24×7 nature of some of the operations, shifts are also required which increases overall staffing needs. With fewer locations, it may be possible to streamline the technical staff by up to 25 resources.

Costs to Achieve Staff Reductions – Estimated costs to achieve the identified headcount reduction savings is approximately $2.1M to $2.8M in severance costs. The timing of the severance costs will depend on the execution date of the merger and how aggressively the organization chooses to reduce headcount.

Observations on De-federalization of VOA/OCB and on TSI

VOA, OCB, and BBG/IBB make up approximately $500M (about 66%) of the overall spend on US International Broadcasting, or more than double the spend of the Grantee organizations combined. A full view of synergies opportunities across US International Broadcasting cannot be understood until these organizations are reviewed as well.

Throughout the assessment period, several themes emerged from the discussion regarding VOA, OCB and BBG/IBB:

While there are almost no content overlaps among the Grantees, there are significant overlaps with VOA. The Grantees believe that magnitude of the synergies available by addressing this overlap is greater than the benefits to be gained by just integrating the three Grantees.

All senior Grantee leadership indicated that the merger of the Grantees had merit if VOA was included due to the potential savings resulting from elimination of language service duplication.

It is unclear whether de-federalizing VOA is actually feasible or even desirable. Additional work is required to determine the pros and cons, and financial impact. Issues that must be included in the study are:

Potential loss of major backers:

BBG funding is for a Voice of America that could be perceived as a governmental, rather than an NGO function.

National security:

If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security, privatization may not be feasible.

In the near term, there are opportunities to find efficiencies with VOA, such as co-location to reduce costs. These opportunities are being addressed on an ad hoc basis.

The Grantees have an interest in taking on some of the distribution functions of TSI, especially if TSI is considering outsourcing them to a 3rd party. The Grantees would like to have the opportunity to ‘bid’ on this work before it goes to a 3rd party as they believe they can offer more cost effective solutions. They also would prefer to have great control over the distribution function to ensure their market needs are met.

There is question of whether the TSI backbone transmission infrastructure could be more efficiently operated by a grantee, rather than federal, organization. A reversal of the client/provider relationship between the federal and non-federal organizations could be explored in terms of efficiencies.

“If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security, privatization may not be feasible,” – Deloitte

“If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security, privatization may not be feasible,” is a conclusion of a consolidation study done by Deloitte, but the consulting firm recommends a quick action on the BBG plan to merge grantee broadcasters. Free Media Online has obtained a copy of the Grantee Consolidation Assessment done for the Broadcasting Board of Governors by Deloitte. It was announced at today’s BBG open meeting that the report will be posted on the BBG Strategy website. The report makes references to “language duplication” between VOA and the Grantees, which implies that there are no differences in mission between VOA and the Grantees. If VOA and the Grantees have different missions, then “language duplication” is a non-issue. If they have the same mission — which evidently they do not — then the logical step would be to combine VOA and the Grantees. Deloitte, however, did discover that VOA broadcasts may have a national security and foreign policy mission and is advocating a further study of the BBG’s de-Federalization proposal.

Here are some of the main elements of the report:

Key Findings:

Today RFE/RL, RFA and MBN are three separate private 501(c)(3) organizations with combined resources of approximately $240 million and approximately 2,000 full time employees and contractors. All have a common mission to act as a surrogate media outlet in countries that do not have an open media environment; additionally, unlike RFE/RL and RFA, MBN is charged with providing context about America, its people, and policies.

Aside from Arabic services to Iraq, there is no overlap in language services among the Grantees, or in bureau locations. With just a merger of the Grantees, there is no potential to eliminate duplication of language services beyond that already planned. A combined entity framework can set the foundation for achieving substantial synergies with respect to the large overlap with VOA language services, which is unanimously supported by all Grantee Presidents.

There are several potential benefits of a merger of the three grantee corporations:

- It would serve as a first step in the execution of the Board’s Strategic Plan that calls for consolidating and streamlining management and administrative infrastructure. A merger would create a single grantee management team which would facilitate
coordination with the BBG in pursuit of its strategic objectives.

- It creates more financial transparency and demonstrates to stakeholders that BBG leadership is committed to allocating resources as efficiently as possible and eliminating waste – potentially garnering support and trust.

- It creates an enforceable structure for more formalized content sharing, advancing the Board’s strategy to harness original reporting from across the language services to create a global news service with rich programming.

- It creates resource savings over time with the elimination of duplicative administrative and technical infrastructures and pooled purchasing power (e.g., for equipment, services, and insurance). This is a key benefit in our current economic environment.

- Positive reaction from Congress if new services, technologies and broadcast medium can be achieved without an increase to the top line.

- Annual run rate savings of $9M, or about 10% can be achieved on approximately $90M of addressable spend which is approximately 38% of the aggregate Grantee budget.

Savings could expand to nearly $14M annually with aggressive facilities consolidation.

Risks of integrating the Grantee corporations include:

- Possible negative reaction from Congress if a merger of the Grantees impedes the flow of content to audiences.

- Uncertain result of merging a partially unionized workforce with non-unionized staff.

- A potentially broader impact of digital and physical security threats in a merged environment if not mitigated.

- Potential disruption to current foreign business licenses and relationships in host countries.

Over five years, the cumulative net savings from merging the Grantee organizations is estimated to be approximately $30M to $40M. There are cumulative savings of $35M to $50M available with one-time costs of $8M to $12M. The savings result from a small headcount reduction of approximately 45-50 resources, plus non-headcount savings related to sourcing efficiencies, and facilities and technology infrastructure consolidation. Longer term, there are opportunities for additional headcount reduction if facilities are more aggressively consolidated.

Conclusions:

Deloitte believes that the merging of the Grantees does have merit, and does make sense strategically and economically. We heard in numerous discussions with leaders across the Grantees that current structure is a product of the evolution of the Agency, is not ideal, and would not be the logical approach if one were starting fresh. We agree with that perspective. The current siloed structure is not an optimal foundation for the new strategic direction envisioned by the Board.

From an operational perspective, we see no roadblocks that cannot be overcome. The vast majority (around 75%) of the resources of the Grantees are devoted to content and programming, so their day to day roles will not change. Merging the administrative processes, policies, and supporting systems will be no more complicated here than in any other merger of a similar scale.

In the current economic environment, continuing to operate three separate organizations with redundant executive management teams, administrative infrastructures, audits, etc. seems to be an
inefficient use of taxpayer resources. The potential annual savings of $9M to $14M could be redeployed toward journalistic initiatives that advance the Board strategic vision.

As with any merger there are risks associated with the potential decline in employee morale. These can be mitigated by swift decision-making and a strong change management program.

Delaying a decision about the path forward will create uncertainty which can dampen employee morale. In addition, delays will stall the advancement of the Board’s strategic plan and cause the organization to miss out on significant potential savings.

Recommendations and Next Steps:

We recommend that the Board approve the merger of the Grantees, and proceed with the design of the new organization and the implementation planning. Based on a typical merger timeframe of about 6 months from a decision, we believe that the Board should target a “Day 1” in July 2012.

To pursue the larger savings available by reducing duplication of language services, as noted earlier and broadly supported by Grantee leadership, we recommend commencing a study on the feasibility, benefits and costs of VOA/OCB de-federalization, reportable at the Board’s March 2012 meeting to explore 3 items:

1. The “quick hit” opportunities available from partially integrating some VOA/OCB operations into the Grantee structure without de-federalization. The objective of this study would be to identify initiatives that could be implemented in parallel with the Day
1 of the Grantee merger in July 2012.

2. The next tranche of opportunities that would become feasible in FY13 without de-federalization.

3. The feasibility of VOA/OCB de-federalization, including benefits, risks, and financial implications.

Key Principles:

There were several key principles that were consistently articulated throughout the visioning discussions with the Grantees. These are things that all believed should be the ‘guard rails’ of any potential integration.

There should be no change in the journalistic mission of the organizations – the current markets and audiences should continue to be served with the content appropriate for them.

The existing market-facing brands should remain intact as they are critical to success. The relationship between the brands and the grantee entity is different across the three organizations. For MBN, the brands (Alhurra, Radio Sawa, Afia Darfur) are the externally known identities, while for Radio Free Asia the brand and the organization are one in the same across its market. RFE/RL has individual brands by service that will be critical to maintain.

The new organization should maintain an entrepreneurial spirit and ability to remain nimble; avoiding bureaucracy.

Risks:

There are five primary potential risks that were identified from discussions with the Grantees.

Congressional reaction:

There is uncertainty as to reaction from Congress. The proposed merger has positive actions in doing more with less, but has the potential to disrupt content if not managed carefully.

Cultural differences:

The three organizations have cultural differences. MBN is a primarily a television focused entity and produces content in a single language , Arabic. RFE/RL and RFA are primarily radio entities (though expanding into other media) and produce content in many languages. Because RFA is much smaller in employee count and budget, it sees itself as a more tightly knit community than the others. It also operates with the least sophisticated resources of the three (e.g. production facilities, technical resources). Bringing together the cultures of these three organizations will require a focused change management effort. Mergers bring uncertainty and change, so there is a possibility that employee morale could suffer resulting in an increased risk of employee turnover. Decision-making delays can exacerbate this situation; employees who are uncertain of the path forward and their role (or lack thereof) in the new organization may be more likely to seek other opportunities.

Unions:

A significant portion of RFA’s workforce is unionized, while RFE/RL has 8 unionized employees and MBN has no unions. A deliberate plan is required to ensure that all parties’ interests are represented in the planning.

Security:

Because of the nature of their work, each organization comes under threat (both physical and digital). Today, when one organization is attacked, the others are unaffected. If the organizations are combined, a threat could affect the scope of the entire operation. For example, if systems are combined and there is a digital attack inspired by RFA’s content, programming and employees in the Middle East and Europe could be affected as well. That said, there are mitigation strategies that could be employed to address this risk.

Staff Reductions:

Management Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 13-14 high-level management staff positions, including two Presidents, several VPs and other management support roles. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new leadership structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

Finance/Admin Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 14-15 finance/admin staff positions, including finance management, accounting, and procurement personnel. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new finance organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

HR Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation is not estimated to reduce overall headcount for HR in the near term, however would likely result in a different mix of positions required -eliminating for example two Director Roles, but increasing the staff at various locations should no facility changes be assumed. The consolidation is likely to require job roles and benefits plans to be redefined and broadly, and HR policy will need to be revisited. If facilities consolidation occurs, there may be an opportunity to reduce 1-2 HR positions.

Facilities Staff Reductions – Real estate consolidation could yield approximately 3-5 facilities staff headcount reductions. In the near term for example, savings would result from offices in the Washington, DC metro area being consolidated. These savings could be realized quickly if existing space is subleased and facilities consolidation begins upon execution of the merger. If facilities consolidation is delayed until the nearest term leases expire, savings will begin to be realized in FY14 and fully realized in FY15.

Communications – Grantee consolidation could eliminate 2-3 communications positions. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new communications organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

Technology Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 13 technology staff positions . These savings could begin to be realized as soon as the new technology organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging. The location/facilities strategy will affect the degree of opportunity in this area. On-site technical resources are required in facilities where production takes place and where there are significant groups of users. Because of the 24×7 nature of some of the operations, shifts are also required which increases overall staffing needs. With fewer locations, it may be possible to streamline the technical staff by up to 25 resources.

Costs to Achieve Staff Reductions – Estimated costs to achieve the identified headcount reduction savings is approximately $2.1M to $2.8M in severance costs. The timing of the severance costs will depend on the execution date of the merger and how aggressively the organization chooses to reduce headcount.

Observations on De-federalization of VOA/OCB and on TSI

VOA, OCB, and BBG/IBB make up approximately $500M (about 66%) of the overall spend on US International Broadcasting, or more than double the spend of the Grantee organizations combined. A full view of synergies opportunities across US International Broadcasting cannot be understood until these organizations are reviewed as well.

Throughout the assessment period, several themes emerged from the discussion regarding VOA, OCB and BBG/IBB:

While there are almost no content overlaps among the Grantees, there are significant overlaps with VOA. The Grantees believe that magnitude of the synergies available by addressing this overlap is greater than the benefits to be gained by just integrating the three Grantees.

All senior Grantee leadership indicated that the merger of the Grantees had merit if VOA was included due to the potential savings resulting from elimination of language service duplication.

It is unclear whether de-federalizing VOA is actually feasible or even desirable. Additional work is required to determine the pros and cons, and financial impact. Issues that must be included in the study are:

Potential loss of major backers:

BBG funding is for a Voice of America that could be perceived as a governmental, rather than an NGO function.

National security:

If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security,
privatization may not be feasible.

In the near term, there are opportunities to find efficiencies with VOA, such as co-location to reduce costs. These opportunities are being addressed on an ad hoc basis.

The Grantees have an interest in taking on some of the distribution functions of TSI, especially if TSI is considering outsourcing them to a 3rd party. The Grantees would like to have the opportunity to ‘bid’ on this work before it goes to a 3rd party as they believe they can offer more cost effective solutions. They also would prefer to have great control over the distribution function to ensure their market needs are met.

There is question of whether the TSI backbone transmission infrastructure could be more efficiently operated by a grantee, rather than federal, organization. A reversal of the client/provider relationship between the federal and non-federal organizations could be explored in terms of efficiencies.

Our regular contributor, The Federalist, also makes other points on the BBG’s audience size announcement.

US International Broadcasting and the BBG: The Numbers Game
by The Federalist

In its press release of November 15, 2011 the BBG claims an audience increase of 22 million to a projected total of 187 million people, based on its “audience data.”

Here is a short primer on “the numbers game.”

Everything starts with the questions asked in the survey. The BBG does not provide a breakdown of the questions asked in the press release or in its “research methodology.” This is important because no one can examine how the BBG collates the responses.

Typically, survey questions will provide a range of questions. Within that range will be responses that would collectively be categorized as positive and perhaps one or two responses that would be categorized as negative. Depending on the intended outcome that the BBG wants to demonstrate, one method used could be to lump all the positives together, particularly if collectively they represent a positive aggregate response.

Everyone inside the Cohen Building knows that surveys are an inexact process. This is especially the case when conducting surveys in authoritarian or controlled societies. A lot also has to do with how the survey is conducted, often over the telephone. If people live in a controlled society, the prudent thing to do is to be judicious in how one responds to anonymous surveys. Thus, depending on how things are going in the target area, the responses could be more or less of an accurate representation of respondent habits.

One would also need to know where surveys were conducted: were they concentrated in major urban population centers or did they include respondents in the interior regions of the countries surveyed?

All this being said, let us work with the numbers the BBG provides.

If the BBG numbers are accurate, an audience of 187 million people is not to be taken lightly (for reasons we will get to below).

At the same time, one needs to look at the big picture in the world of numbers. For example:

The total global population is put at about 7 billion.

Of that number, an estimated 2 billion are at the subsistence level.

In China, latest estimates place the population at over 1.3 billion.

In short, 187 million can get lost in the cacophony of the 7 billion.

Next, one should examine the statements made in the press release in support of its survey findings.

“…in Egypt, where Alhurra TV doubled its weekly audience to 15% in tandem with the Arab Spring…”

The question here is how does this compare to other broadcasters, including the regional leader, al-Jazeera TV? The BBG press release doesn’t say. This is a key point. If the BBG audience is fractionally less than that of al-Jazeera, public opinion has moved away from that projected by the United States. Further, in our view, the so-called “Arab Spring” is over. This number could be artificially inflated by momentary events.

Also, the BBG doesn’t say how Alhurra TV fares in the region as a whole. That would be important to see if Alhurra TV is making inroads elsewhere. Since the BBG press release is silent on the point, we can presume that it is not.

“Audience declines took place notably in Iran, where the government continues aggressive jamming of every BBG transmission platform, including satellite uplink jamming;”

Those pesky Iranians. They continue to prove themselves adept at interdiction technology.

But beyond that, another question is how much of the audience loss may be due more to lack of interest than as much to government counter-measures? Keep in mind that the BBG claims that its Farsi-language “Parazit” is widely popular in Iran. One would think that if this were indeed true, it would be reflected in its survey results. Coupled with other agency research on Iran, what may be more the case is that the programs no longer have resonance with an Iranian audience. Further, one must also consider the internal conflict with the Persian News Network (PNN) which some writers allege has become a toady for the regime in Tehran.

Also keep in mind that PNN, largely television based, represents a substantial budgetary “gas guzzler” for the BBG.

We’re saving the best for last.

“While radio remains the BBG’s number one media platform, reaching 106 million people per week, television’s growth puts it 97 million people. The Internet audience was approximately 10 million, with the largest online audiences measured in Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt and Iran.”

Bingo!

There’s no “while” about it. Radio is still king.

But most important of all is this:

Even if you take the BBG numbers at face value, when you examine them in the context of the BBG “strategic plan,” you can clearly see its disaster in the making.

If you eliminate radio broadcasting, as it is the clear intent of the BBG strategic plan, you lose over half of your audience. That 187 million becomes 81 million.

The television component is no bargain. It is the most expensive production and delivery broadcast medium, requiring more people, more production time, satellite time and fees, etc. In terms of cost, it is the least sustainable of the media choices available to the BBG. Plus, one should keep in mind, as the BBG press release points out, it is vulnerable to interdiction, both in terms of blocking satellite channels and in terms of downlink requirements at the receiving end. While people use satellite dishes around the world, the fact remains that certain regimes periodically confiscate private satellite dishes, in part just because they can. Also, in those places where the BBG relies upon placement on television stations (they are not really affiliates in the same use of the word here in the US), these stations often walk a fine line with the sitting governments. Put something on the air that someone doesn’t like and good-bye BBG programs or risk the loss of one’s license and even invite some jail time if the regime is offended enough.

Last but definitely not least, its global Internet audience is tagged at 10 million. If the BBG carries through with its plans to use the Internet as its sole platform for audio, video and text, it will have the equivalent of no audience.

About 70 years into US international broadcasting, how long will it take the BBG to move its Internet audience to a size approximating its current radio audience, particularly when one notes the ability of third parties to engage effectively in cyber warfare and/or, as in the case with China, to have well-established controls to block websites the government deems as undesirable. It is complete fiction to believe that the BBG will have at its command an impenetrable cyber defense against these attacks.

And there is another thing. The BBG has to pay to be posted to search engines. Lose the search engines and there goes the recognition and access.

“Audience declines took place notably in Iran, where the government continues aggressive jamming of every BBG transmission platform, including satellite uplink jamming; and Pakistan, where the media market is increasingly fragmented and use of radio is declining.”

This statement may not be truly representative of the situational reality. The truth of the matter is that all global media markets are increasingly fragmented. This is a significant issue when one considers the BBG claim that its intended outcome is to be “the leading global news network.”

With specific regard to Pakistan, audience loss may have more to do with over-heated anti-American sentiment and a whole lot less to do with the assertion that “use of radio is declining.” It is well known that the Taliban make considerable use of radio in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is well known that the Pakistanis have become increasingly uneasy with unilateral US military actions within this territory. All of these things may have a whole lot more to do with the decline in the BBG’s audience in Pakistan.

Saying that “use of radio is declining” in Pakistan also seemingly contradicts the BBG effort with its “Radio Deewa” and “Radio Aap ki Dunyaa” projects in the region.

Let’s go back to the numbers:

The BBG is laying claim that the intended goal of its “new” strategic plan is to become the world’s leading global news network. What does that mean? How much of that 7 billion in total world population puts the BBG in the hunt to validate that claim? Hovering around 200 million according to its claimed global audience numbers, it’s a long haul to reach anything approximating a reasonable suggestion that the BBG is a “leading global news network.”

And keep in mind that if the BBG carries out its intended destruction of US Government international radio broadcasting, its audience gets cut by more than half. All of those people aren’t going to run to the Internet. That lesson was learned in Russia, contrary to the outrageous claims by the BBG of Russian audience increases. The BBG’s own research showed that its audience in Russia fell off a cliff when it ended its direct VOA Russian radio broadcasts in 2008.

The BBG has set a deadline of 2016 (its Soviet-style five-year plan) to reach its intended goals. Those goals, based on the BBG’s own numbers, would actually represent a substantially diminished audience with the loss of radio broadcasting. VOA director David Ensor essentially reiterated those goals in a recent C-SPAN television interview.

How does this intended outcome benefit the United States? How does this intended outcome represent a judicious use of US taxpayer money? Unfortunately, to all appearances the answer is” it doesn’t.

In the end, audience size aside, it all comes down to effectiveness. The BBG already a sizable “global news network” through its many and varied entities. And still, with all these assets, its penetration of global publics remains challenged.

One last thing: check the numbers of the press release:

106 million radio audience.
97 million television audience.
10 million Internet audience.

Total: 213 million.

That’s more than 187 million at the opening of the press release.

Well, we’ll give the BBG the difference. It’s still not enough to be “the leading global news network.”

Far from it.

The Federalist
November 16, 2011

###

From the BBG official website:

BBG Broadcasts Reach Record Audiences
(WASHINGTON, D.C.—November 15, 2011) U.S. government funded international broadcasters reached an estimated 187 million people every week in 2011, an increase of 22 million from last year’s figure, according to new audience data being made public by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

“We are pleased that people the world over are responding in unprecedented numbers to our high-quality journalism and active audience engagement,” said BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson. “The ability of our broadcasters to inform, engage and connect audiences through traditional and social media alike lie behind these impressive results and will be essential to driving future audience reach and impact.”

The record numbers, released in the BBG Performance and Accountability Report (PAR), measure the combined audience of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio and TV Martí, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa). The report details impact on audiences around the globe including people in the world’s most repressive media and political environments.

The BBG’s PAR follows on the heels of BBG’s latest strategic plan, Impact through Innovation and Integration, which sets an over-arching objective of making BBG the world’s leading international news agency working to foster freedom and democracy with the goal of reaching 216 million people weekly by 2016.

This year there were significant audience increases in Afghanistan, where RFE/RL and VOA together reach 75% of adults weekly; in Egypt, where Alhurra TV doubled its weekly audience to 15% in tandem with the Arab Spring; and in Indonesia, where VOA’s aggressive affiliate strategy has boosted weekly audiences to some 38 million adults.

Audiences in many other strategically relevant countries held strong. In Nigeria, VOA retains its position as a news source of record with 23 million weekly listeners. In Burma, VOA and RFA reach 26% and 24% of adults, respectively, amounting to a weekly audience of 10 million.

Audience declines took place notably in Iran, where the government continues aggressive jamming of every BBG transmission platform, including satellite uplink jamming; and Pakistan, where the media market is increasingly fragmented and use of radio is declining.

While radio remains the BBG’s number one media platform, reaching 106 million people per week, television’s growth puts it at 97 million people. The Internet audience was approximately 10 million, with the largest online audiences measured in Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt and Iran.

Download 2011 Performance and Accountability Report (PDF)

BBG 2011 Audience Overview (PDF)

BBG Research Methodology (PDF)

October 13, 2011
For Immediate Release

Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting Announces Advisory Board

The Committee for International Broadcasting (CUSIB) is proud to announce the formation of its Advisory Board:
 
Harry Wu, Founder of the Laogai Research Foundation;
Tala Dowlatshahi, Senior Adviser and U.S. Representative of Reporters Without Borders;
Appo Jabarian, Executive Publisher and Senior Editor of USA Armenian Life Magazine;
Jing Zhang, President of Women’s Rights in China;
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers;
Joe Brown, President of the Pasadena Chapter NAACP;
Herbert W. Stupp, Baruch College, former NYC Commissioner;
Robert A. Senser, Editor/Publisher of Human Rights for Workers website;
Manny Papir, Media Consultant and Human Rights Campaigner;
Timothy Shamble, President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1812;
Gary Marco, retired employee of the Voice of America and former President of Local 1418, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees;
Marie Ciliberti, former Voice of America writer, producer and broadcaster for programs directed to the former Soviet Union.
 
“We are honored to welcome such a diverse group of men and women who bring experience from journalism and human rights advocacy to our Advisory Board as we analyze the policies and plans of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the Federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting. The CUSIB has been formed in response to the belief that the BBG lacks transparency especially after such a serious rebuke by the U.S. Congress,” stated Ann Noonan, Executive Director of CUSIB.  “Last month we were encouraged to learn that the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations rejected the Broadcasting Board of Governor’s plan to pull the plug on Voice of America’s uncensored radio and television broadcasts to China and rely instead solely on the vulnerable internet. With this Advisory Board in place, we hope to assist the BBG’s transparency goals and avoid future mistakes.”

CUSIB co-founder Ted Lipien stated: “The CUSIB reviews U.S. international broadcasting operations in an effort to develop solutions for restoring U.S. broadcasting’s emphasis on freedom of the press and on human rights. Some of our most recent concerns have included censorship of the Voice of America’s news broadcasts to Ethiopia as well as reporting from North Korea that covered local conditions, notably the ongoing food shortage, only in passing, while giving extensive airing to the North Korean regime’s propaganda.  We hope our Advisory Board will be welcome in the BBG’s discussions.” 

U.S. international broadcasting includes the Voice of America, which offers international news as well as explaining U.S. policies and providing information on American culture, society and politics, and the surrogate broadcasters — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí) — which focus more closely on internal news in countries without free media. CUSIB believes both VOA and the surrogate broadcasters serve very important functions and deserve support of all Americans.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization working to strengthen free flow of uncensored news from the United States to countries with restricted and developing media environments. For further information, please contact:

Ann Noonan, co-founder and Executive Director
Tel. 646-251-6069

Ted Lipien, co-founder
Tel. 415-793-1642

Email: contact@cusib.org

This continuing nightmare is revealed in a meeting that David Ensor, the new Voice of America (VOA) director, had with staffers of the VOA Central News Division. A short essay here cannot do justice to the details provided by BBG Watch in Mr. Ensor’s encounter with the staff. Indeed, the meeting went far beyond just the Central News Division but into many aspects of US international broadcasting, including those of the surrogate broadcasters like Radio Free Asia, Radio Sawa and al-Hurra television (two of the biggest wastes of money) and others.

Before dealing with this story, we must turn our attention to reports of a bizarre occurrence inside the Cohen Building this week. Some agency employees attempting to access this new website created by former and current BBG employees were greeted with a message:

“Security risk. Blocked for your protection.”

This message appeared sporadically, not uniformly. For example, two people in the VOA Newsroom attempting to access the site could find one being blocked and the other with unfettered access. We know that access was blocked on at least one computer in the VOA Mandarin Service. On the other hand, other employees reported no access problems.

In responding to an inquiry by Free Media Online, an NGO which promotes media freedom and fights press censorship, the agency’s public relations office denied that the agency was blocking access to his site. According to the agency’s IT security team, the BBG Watch website triggered a “site warning,” an automated message by Websense, an Internet security company, and that the warning went to “ALL its customers.” The agency’s IT people also said that users could manually override the blocking by hitting a “Continue” button.

This explanation raises some questions:

First, according to the agency’s IT security team, this warning went to “ALL of its customers.” This does not explain how some computers in the Cohen Building got the warning and others did not. That certainly doesn’t sound like “ALL of its customers,” unless, of course, BBG IT security team does not really secure all VOA computers. That would not be surprising considering their past record.

Second, the agency’s IT people suggest that users could manually override the warning by hitting a “Continue” button. With respect to this explanation, let’s consider this:

This is an agency of the Federal government. A computer workstation is US Government Property. Routinely, Federal employees are advised of the risks to the Federal Government IT infrastructure. They are cautioned – strongly – to avoid precipitating risks to this infrastructure. They are advised of the damage to that infrastructure caused by viruses, spyware and malware. Federal employees are also advised that if they are found to have introduced harmful IT programs into a government computer or computer system they can be disciplined up to and including removal from the Federal Service for cause.

With that in mind, and a “Continue” button staring you in the face, a rather short risk-to-reward assessment tells any rational Federal employee not to put his/her job, career, retirement, etc. on the line and to drop the attempt to view the site.

Let’s also keep in mind that this is the agency that got hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army, a division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Council. “Hacked” might not be the best descriptive term. The agency got creamed – all of its websites and proxies down for five hours, while an earlier attack by a still unidentified source blacked out VOA websites for nearly two days.

As one might wryly observe, maybe this is how the agency is spending “circumvention” money it got from the State Department: a classification engine with a category of “Potentially Damaging Content” described by the agency’s IT security team as a “flaky category for us in the past.” It sounds like it is just as flaky in the present and rather revealing of existent or potential agency IT vulnerabilities.

Perhaps this is what contributes to making BBG Internet operations an inviting target: security protocols described as “flaky” that block legitimate websites and invites users to manually override warnings.

One can only imagine how this episode will be interpreted in places like Iran or China.

Accidental or just plain pedestrian – no matter what the explanation – it is yet another example of dysfunctional outcomes inside the Cohen Building and of the Board’s grand dreams for its Internet strategy.

Back to the Ensor meeting with the VOA Central News Division:

These notes from the meeting are a gold mine of information. They bear careful reading, particularly with regard to the agency’s interaction with the Congress which appropriates and authorizes American taxpayer money to provide for the operation of this agency.

To outward appearances, what is perhaps the most important revelation is this: the BBG doesn’t have a “strategic plan.” It has what might be better characterized as an agenda. The two are most certainly not the same. This agenda intends to create an agency that, among many other things, reduces the power of the Congress, as representative of the American people, to decide what is in the National and Public Interest of the American people when it comes to US international broadcasting.

This agenda is so convoluted and ponderous that the agency can’t figure out how to make it work. Instead of streamlining the organization, the wunderkinds of the IBB propose to remake the various grantees into one gigantic organization, no doubt requiring the expansion of support and administrative staff to figure out how to make it work. Indeed, the BBG is in the process of looking for a consultant to make their “strategic plan” (or rather, their agenda) work. It’s a process that has been tried before with a variety of consultants, large and small, including the well-known Booz-Allen. Recommendations have been buried in a file cabinet somewhere in the Cohen Building; and all the while, the inept bureaucrats demonstrate they lack the capacity to make the agency function effectively.

Mr. Ensor acknowledges that some of the most expensive undertakings of the Board, that of the combined operations of Radio Sawa and al-Hurra television to the Middle East, are not effective. No kidding. If you believe in the so-called “Arab Spring,” or the BBG impact on Arab/Muslim views toward the US, there’s a place for you inside the Cohen Building, or perhaps, the Sawa and al-Hurra facilities in Springfield, VA.

Anticipating the end of VOA Mandarin and Cantonese broadcasts, Mr. Ensor called upon staffers in these services to come up with innovative ideas for satellite television to China. This serves as a perfect example of the fantasy world of the BBG. The Chinese government has made it plain that it is and will continue to block programs of the BBG. The main effort is with VOA and RFA websites. However, the same applies to other forms of communication, including television. The Chinese government has substantial resources at its disposal. Indeed, the BBG has facilitated the efficient and effective use of these resources by proposing the elimination of the radio broadcasts of VOA Mandarin and Cantonese. The Chinese are masterful chess players. It makes the game all the more enjoyable for them when your counterpart makes decisions that take powerful chess pieces off the game board. Advantage: People’s Republic of China.

At worst, this agenda is nothing more than a con game, hawked by IBB staff with a penchant for greasy monologues and oxymoronic phrases. Under scrutiny, the sales job doesn’t hold up. Why?

Things have gone bad and are beyond the point of no return. Mr. Ensor acknowledged as much in the case of VOA Worldwide English. He is right. There is no going back to what used to be and what was effective with global audiences. And it applies to more than just VOA Worldwide English. It applies to the entire enterprise. The agency has lost its resonance. It has been overtaken by events, some geopolitical, some technological. World populations are listening to other messages from other quarters. Momentum has shifted away from US international broadcasting.

Mr. Ensor also repeated the often-used BBG example that all of US international broadcasting is about the equivalent dollar cost of just one F-16 fighter aircraft. As he put it, “we’re a cheap date.” The problem is that we are finding it hard to pay for that one F-16 which protects and defends US interests. If the American people have to make a choice between the F-16 and US international broadcasting, the F-16 wins every time. Indeed, if the Congress or the administration ended all of US international broadcasting today, aside from a handful of academics, bloggers and organizations within various ethnic communities, the painful truth is that the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t miss it and wouldn’t care. Priorities are elsewhere.

These are just a handful of examples of how bad it is for US international broadcasting at the hands of BBG/IBB “decision-making,” and we do use the term loosely.

Mr. Ensor’s tenure with the agency may be brief. Indeed, it may be briefer by the moment because the BBG/IBB has no stomach for the true dimensions of its failures. However, the insights provided by his comments in this meeting with the VOA Central News division may be…

Priceless.

The Federalist
September 2011

A RIF (Reduction in Force) will happen.

“There are going to be some RIFS. I don’t think it is constructive to put a number out when the numbers have to go through about five different other groups, now it goes to the Board in a few days time, then it has to go to (OMB Director) Jack Lew, then it goes to subcommittees on the Hill.”

“There are going to have to be reductions, the substance of VOA I think is going to go on and be stronger. I think there are a lot of really cool things we can do here.”

“I’m going to fight like hell” to minimize cuts, Ensor said.

On the BBG’s plan to end VOA Chinese broadcasts, which members of Congress are working to block, Ensor suggested that he is in favor of expanding satellite television transmissions which were to be eliminated under the BBG plan.

“I would like to have a proposal in a matter of weeks on an expansion in the number of hours of satellite television, I would like to see some ideas, let’s come up with a smart idea because I think we need to move some of the money we are spending on Mandarin shortwave. It was previously to be cut but may now be restored, we need to try to get permission, and we’re going to have to get it to move some of that into satellite television.”

“By the way, all these changes, any change we make, we are so over-regulated by Congress and committees and the BBG, there are so many layers over the top of this it is a bit distressing. But what I think, given the situation in the country, what I think may work and what I think we must try, is to come up with our own plans for how to move forward and address the goals that Congress and the American people want us to address. So, there are key countries for example, it is not a secret that China, Iran and North Korea and Pakistan are particularly important countries for us, and it is part of my job and all of our jobs to try to figure out how to better reach those audiences, well OK instead of being on the defensive and reacting to things all the time, let’s come up with some proposals. So for example in Mandarin I want a new television program or programs. I want to double our work, I want to take that money out of shortwave radio. And then I want to go to the Hill and sell it to them. They could say no, but I am betting they will say yes. If we have a positive plan, something we think the money will work better to reach more Chinese. That is a bet I am hoping that we can all make together, butthere is a certain amount of risk involved.”

“I promise to make that point on the Hill, and wherever else, in the media, I can go. So I will try to be a defender of the work we do here, the money we need to do this, but realistically we still have to talk about cuts.”

“In national security we’re [VOA] a cheap date.”

“My suspicion is it is not going to be as bad as we were forced to make it look. I just don’t think the president is going to want to do it. For the price of one airplane we supply the U.S. will an enormously valuable asset.”

“I was asked by the Board and was asked do you agree with this idea (restructuring) are you willing to work toward this goal, and I said yes I am, and I do.”

“I actually think this period of change toward consolidation is going to be harder for the others than it is for us because we are VOA already and in effect what is going to happen is they are going to become so too, inevitably. We are VOA, we are the big organization, with 30 percent of the budget we produce 70 percent of the audience. We are already in television effectively.”

February will be a key month as the BBG is forced to make “a whole series of decisions” about consolidation.

“The BBG currently told the RFA (Radio Free Asia), RFE (Radio Free Europe)and MBN [Middle East Broadcast Network, which runs the U.S. government's al-Hurra television] to combine into one.”

For the time being, Ensor said, VOA will remain a federal organization.

“They have not worked that out. The first step that the BBG has set in motion is for a process under which the 3 grantees become one grantee and for the moment OCB and VOA look for ways to work more closely with the others, but we remain federal and they remain non-government.”

Steve Redisch, VOA’s Executive Editor who was acting director before Ensor arrived to take up his political appointment, said the massive restructuring would not eliminate “brands” such as Alhurra television for the Middle East, Radio Sawa which broadcasts to the Mideast, or TV Ashna, a relatively new VOA TV operation for Afghanistan.

“What has happened since 1942,” Ensor said, “is Congress created a Rube Goldberg creation if you will, a kind of hydra-headed international broadcasting, which I doubt the taxpayer can any longer afford to have.”

Asked by one employee if the restructuring would address the public perception that BBG operations remain highly duplicative, Ensor said some cuts proposed are in language services “where two outfits are pretty strong and doing similar things.” However, he said he has not agreed with those on the BBG advocating “eliminating duplication on the basis of “function.”

Ensor also suggested that the restructuring will be easier for the VOA than for other broadcasters under the BBG, with which VOA he said will have to be working more closely.

“Many of them find themselves as Pepsi to our Coke,” Ensor said. “Guess what? We can’t afford both anymore.I think we will have an easier time doing that they may because they have been so busy defining themselves as the “un-VOA.”

“One other note on consolidation, I don’t want to hand the VOA to the next director, weaker than it is now.I want to have it stronger, so though I want to be a good corporate citizen if you will within the process and want to work with the BBG try to reach these goals, if it seems to me and the leadership of VOA that if they are asking us to do something that would be really bad for VOA we’re going to fight it.”

Ensor also addressed what has been a steady elimination of VOA worldwide broadcasting in the English language, which employees and many former VOA officials have said has hurt American interests over the past decade.

“Can I tell you there is going to be some massive re-building of it? No there isn’t, it has gone too far down to be built into some huge force at VOA.”

VOA language services will continue local news service. Stopping it would be a death sentence, Ensor said. BBG Watch agrees.

“If you ask VOA to get out of the local news business, it’s a death sentence, and we won’t for one moment do it. We have been doing local news since 1942 along with a mix of national, international and American news, we will continue to do so — that is a winning formula.”

But he also said that additional language services at VOA, as well as Radio Free Asia will be eliminated or severely cut back. “Believe me, there is blood on the floor after this discussion of the last few weeks, and it’s not only ours.”

Pushing for satellite TV

“We need to have mobile apps that get our Internet sites on to those phones. Goat herders in Afghanistan have cellphones and will go hungry rather than give up their monthly contracts, so that is really a big deal.

Another big deal is satellite television. We need to get better at video and get better at television. We need to start moving some of the funds that we have spent on shortwave radio, honorably and well, for all these years, start moving some of that money to things likes satellite television and mobile applications to remain relevant, remain engaged with the international public that we are here to try and reach.”

“One thing I am sure of is that the BBG does not believe, and they are probably not wrong, that the U.S. can any longer afford to have five different flavors out there, to have us and RFE kind of competing with each other and not always liking each other very much and overlapping somewhat. It was kind of fun having that competition but we can no longer afford it, we don’t have enough money so in order to be effective we need to consolidate. There will be savings. You know how many general counsels do you need if you have one entity, etc.”

Ensor, a former CNN, ABC and NPR correspondent, said that within the first five weeks of being VOA director he had already threatened to quit once.

“I really am going to try and consolidate us with the others in every way we can, end “duplication” and go forward and leave [U.S. international broadcasting] it in a better shape than it is today. But I have to be able to quit in anger.”

Responding to one employee who asked how long he expects to remain in his position, Ensor said he hopes to remain for at least two years.

“I have already had to threaten to quit once. I think in this kind of a job, I am a political appointee, you have to be ready to walk. In order to stand for the things that you believe are essential for the organization. An organization like this needs a boss who is willing to walk on principle in order to get the things that the organization needs to go forward. And I am willing to. I hope not to for some time to come. I hope to stay with you for a couple of years or more but I have to be able to do that. I am not a civil servant, I am a political appointee, and I am going to try and stand for this organization with a certain backbone. I am also going to try and stand for the things the BBG has asked us to try and do. I really am going to try and consolidate us with the others in every way we can, end “duplication” and go forward to make international broadcasting, leave it in a better shape than it is today but I have to be able to quit in anger. It is part of what goes with this kind of a job I think, so I can’t tell you I’m hoping to stay for a couple of years or more.”

ProPublica.org: This report on a Holocaust deniers conference hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was broadcast on Dec. 12, 2006 by the U.S. taxpayer-funded Arabic language network Alhurra. Although Alhurra is broadcast only in the Middle East, it operates out of Springfield, Virginia.

Alhurra assured Congress in a May 2007 hearing that the reporter, Ahmad Amin, was fired, but according to internal e-mails he was still on the U.S. payroll, working for Radio Sawa, Alhurra’s Middle East station, until June 12th, 2008.

All captions and speaker identifications are direct translations of the Alhurra report, which incorrectly identifies one attendee as former Louisiana state Representative (and KKK Imperial Wizard) David Duke, and erroneously describes Duke as a “former member of the American House of Representatives.”

Walter Isaacson: America’s Voice Must Be Credible And Must Be Heard

September 29, 2010

(Washington, DC) Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Chairman Walter Isaacson tonight announced a new direction for U.S. international broadcasting that “seizes on the latest media tools and technology to stay one step ahead of those who seek to repress free information around the world.”

As Chairman of the BBG, Isaacson oversees RFE, VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio/TV Marti, Radio Sawa, and Alhurra TV, which have a combined weekly audience of more than 171 million people.

The challenges we face…are as great today as they were during the Cold War. America cannot let itself be outcommunicated by its enemies. “The challenges we face in the new global struggle against repression and intolerance are as great today as they were during the Cold War,” he said at a reception marking the 60th anniversary of RFE’s first broadcast.

“And just as the founders of Radio Free Europe succeeded in developing creative and innovative ways to get news and information to people suffering behind the Iron Curtain, so too must today’s U.S. international broadcasters respond to modern threats to freedom in new and inventive ways.”

Speaking at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Isaacson said, “America cannot let itself be out-communicated by its enemies.”

Read more ofRFE/RL press release.

Read transcript of Walter Isaacson’s speech.

Read BBG website post on Isaacson’s speech.

###

Entrenched political bureaucracy threatens independence and success of U.S. international broadcasting | Free Media Online

FreeMediaOnline.org September 30, 2010 — Free Media Online has reported extensively on mismanagement at the Broadcasting Board of Governors prior to Mr. Isaacson’s appointment as BBG Chairman. The Bush-era BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans, and the BBG executive staff, were responsible, among other things, for the shutting down of Voice of America Arabic broadcasts, ending VOA Russian radio broadcasts just 12 days before Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, planning to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia, and terminating VOA radio programs to Ukraine. Former BBG members and BBG bureaucrats created a number of private broadcasting entities, such as Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, which provided jobs for their friends and associates, and they failed to prevent financial and editorial scandals, including airing of statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra TV and giving airtime to Russian nationalist extremists on Radio Liberty. ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism website, reported on a study commissioned by the U.S. government, which concluded that Alhurra, Arab-language television to the Middle East managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), fails to meet basic journalistic standards and is seen by few.

While Mr. Isaacson is a professional broadcaster, most BBG members, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, have no significant international broadcasting or foreign policy experience and are selected largely on the basis of their loyalty and contributions to either Democratic or Republican Party. By law, the Board must be bipartisan. During George W. Bush’s presidency, former BBG members who pushed hard for the elimination of Voice of America Arabic broadcasts and the creation of Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV were Norman Pattiz and Edward “Ted” Kaufman, both Democrats who worked closely with former Republican BBG members and neocons in Bush’s White House. Ted Kaufman, a big fan of privatizing U.S. international broadcasting, who is now a U.S. Senator from Delaware and was formerly employed by Joe Biden as his chief of staff in the Senate, was also working closely with the BBG executive staff to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and a number of other media-at-risk countries.

The tradition of nominating political loyalists to serve on the BBG continues in the Obama Administration. One of the current BBG members, Michael P. Meehan, had been accused of shoving a journalist who tried to pose a question to Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley. The incident did not convince President Obama to withdraw Mr. Meehan nomination to the Board, which is charged, among other things, with supporting media freedom worldwide.

Whether Mr. Isaacson is successful in moving the mission of U.S. international broadcasting away from benefitting political cronies and their friends among private consultants and contractors to supporting media freedom in countries like Iran, Russia, and China, will depend on his ability to take control of the BBG executive staff. Many of the current top-level BBG bureaucrats were appointed by former BBG members and helped them to destroy the Voice of America as a brand name for responsible and independent U.S. broadcasting to a large number of countries without free media.

BBG employees have often complained about the blunders of the BBG executive team and the political and personal agenda of their former bosses, but their complaints have been so far ignored. In annual federal government surveys, rank-and-file BBG broadcasters and other employees have consistently given BBG Board members and officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) some of the lowest ratings for good management and placed the BBG at the very bottom among federal agencies as a desirable place to work.

BBG employee Dr. Kim Elliott published an op-ed article in The New York Times, in which he pointed out that “the BBC World Service keeps its audience listening on an annual budget of $420 million. The United States spends close to twice as much on international broadcasting — $757 million per year.”

Even though it outspends the BBC by the ratio of almost two to one, the BBG’s worldwide audience is far lower even at the official BBG figures, which are believed to be inflated by BBG bureaucrats. Wasting U.S. taxpayers money, they have created multiple administrative entities and competing brand names within the Broadcasting Board of Governors and together with former BBG members are responsible for the current crisis in U.S. international broadcasting. Mr. Isaacson has a difficult task ahead of him if he is serious about reforms at the BBG.

Read FreeMediaOnline.org reports on BBG.

Walter Isaacson: America’s Voice Must Be Credible And Must Be Heard

September 29, 2010

(Washington, DC) Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Chairman Walter Isaacson tonight announced a new direction for U.S. international broadcasting that “seizes on the latest media tools and technology to stay one step ahead of those who seek to repress free information around the world.”

As Chairman of the BBG, Isaacson oversees RFE, VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio/TV Marti, Radio Sawa, and Alhurra TV, which have a combined weekly audience of more than 171 million people.

The challenges we face…are as great today as they were during the Cold War. America cannot let itself be outcommunicated by its enemies. “The challenges we face in the new global struggle against repression and intolerance are as great today as they were during the Cold War,” he said at a reception marking the 60th anniversary of RFE’s first broadcast.

“And just as the founders of Radio Free Europe succeeded in developing creative and innovative ways to get news and information to people suffering behind the Iron Curtain, so too must today’s U.S. international broadcasters respond to modern threats to freedom in new and inventive ways.”

Speaking at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Isaacson said, “America cannot let itself be out-communicated by its enemies.”

Read more ofRFE/RL press release.

Read transcript of Walter Isaacson’s speech.

Read BBG website post on Isaacson’s speech.

###

Entrenched political bureaucracy threatens independence and success of U.S. international broadcasting | Free Media Online

FreeMediaOnline.org September 30, 2010 — Free Media Online has reported extensively on mismanagement at the Broadcasting Board of Governors prior to Mr. Isaacson’s appointment as BBG Chairman. The Bush-era BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans, and the BBG executive staff, were responsible, among other things, for the shutting down of Voice of America Arabic broadcasts, ending VOA Russian radio broadcasts just 12 days before Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, planning to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia, and terminating VOA radio programs to Ukraine. Former BBG members and BBG bureaucrats created a number of private broadcasting entities, such as Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, which provided jobs for their friends and associates, and they failed to prevent financial and editorial scandals, including airing of statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra TV and giving airtime to Russian nationalist extremists on Radio Liberty. ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism website, reported on a study commissioned by the U.S. government, which concluded that Alhurra, Arab-language television to the Middle East managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), fails to meet basic journalistic standards and is seen by few.

While Mr. Isaacson is a professional broadcaster, most BBG members, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, have no significant international broadcasting or foreign policy experience and are selected largely on the basis of their loyalty and contributions to either Democratic or Republican Party. By law, the Board must be bipartisan. During George W. Bush’s presidency, former BBG members who pushed hard for the elimination of Voice of America Arabic broadcasts and the creation of Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV were Norman Pattiz and Edward “Ted” Kaufman, both Democrats who worked closely with former Republican BBG members and neocons in Bush’s White House. Ted Kaufman, a big fan of privatizing U.S. international broadcasting, who is now a U.S. Senator from Delaware and was formerly employed by Joe Biden as his chief of staff in the Senate, was also working closely with the BBG executive staff to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and a number of other media-at-risk countries.

The tradition of nominating political loyalists to serve on the BBG continues in the Obama Administration. One of the current BBG members, Michael P. Meehan, had been accused of shoving a journalist who tried to pose a question to Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley. The incident did not convince President Obama to withdraw Mr. Meehan nomination to the Board, which is charged, among other things, with supporting media freedom worldwide.

Whether Mr. Isaacson is successful in moving the mission of U.S. international broadcasting away from benefitting political cronies and their friends among private consultants and contractors to supporting media freedom in countries like Iran, Russia, and China, will depend on his ability to take control of the BBG executive staff. Many of the current top-level BBG bureaucrats were appointed by former BBG members and helped them to destroy the Voice of America as a brand name for responsible and independent U.S. broadcasting to a large number of countries without free media.

BBG employees have often complained about the blunders of the BBG executive team and the political and personal agenda of their former bosses, but their complaints have been so far ignored. In annual federal government surveys, rank-and-file BBG broadcasters and other employees have consistently given BBG Board members and officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) some of the lowest ratings for good management and placed the BBG at the very bottom among federal agencies as a desirable place to work.

BBG employee Dr. Kim Elliott published an op-ed article in The New York Times, in which he pointed out that “the BBC World Service keeps its audience listening on an annual budget of $420 million. The United States spends close to twice as much on international broadcasting — $757 million per year.”

Even though it outspends the BBC by the ratio of almost two to one, the BBG’s worldwide audience is far lower even at the official BBG figures, which are believed to be inflated by BBG bureaucrats. Wasting U.S. taxpayers money, they have created multiple administrative entities and competing brand names within the Broadcasting Board of Governors and together with former BBG members are responsible for the current crisis in U.S. international broadcasting. Mr. Isaacson has a difficult task ahead of him if he is serious about reforms at the BBG.

Read FreeMediaOnline.org reports on BBG.

Dr. Elliott, who posts a disclaimer that the views expressed on his private website “are his own and not necessarily those (in fact probably are not those) of his employer, the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, or its parent agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors,” titled his post: “According to employee survey, BBG is no Surface Transportation Board,” suggesting perhaps an improvement in employee morale at one of the worst-managed Federal agencies. This may have been on his part a smart way to avoid problems with his employer by highlighting a dubiously positive news while at the same time exposing the dysfunctional state of the BBG and the lack of reforms by the newly appointed Board members.

In July 2010, Dr. Elliott published an op-ed in The New York Times, Radio Free Bureaucracy, pointing out duplication, mismanagement and waste of taxpayer money in US international broadcasting operations run by the BBG. His New York Times op-ed article does not explain the real reasons behind the existance of multiple bureaucracies and competing brand names within the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The BBG’s organizational chart resembles an extra-extra large pizza supreme, with US taxpayers paying for extra toppings of bureaucrats, personnel offices, public relations specialists, and other administrative staff at each individual BBG-created entity and at the previously established Cold War era semi-private broadcasters, such as Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

Millions of dollars are spent each year to pay for public relations campaigns, conferences, and travel of BBG members and their executive staff to such exotic locations as Prague, Dubai, and Miami. Dr. Elliott did not go into such details in his New York Times op-ed article, but he did point out that “the BBC World Service keeps its audience listening on an annual budget of $420 million. The United States spends close to twice as much on international broadcasting — $757 million per year.”

Even though it outspends the BBC by the ratio of almost two to one, the BBG’s worldwide audience is far lower even at the official BBG figures, which are believed to be inflated by the executive staff in an attempt to make themselves look good to their bosses, the White House, and members of Congress. ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism website, reported that a study commissioned by the U.S. government concluded that Alhurra, Arab-language television to the Middle East managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) fails to meet basic journalistic standards and is seen by few.

Rather than maintaing a BBC-like single and powerful US broadcasting station for international audiences, the previous Board members had created a number of privately-run broadcasting entities to benefit private contractors, including their friends and associates, at the cost of millions of dollars to US taxpayers, while at the same time eliminating or reducing Voice of America broadcasting services to countries like Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

VOA is by far the best known and the most respected brand name in US international broadcasting, but since it is part of the Federal government, BBG members could not easily control it or find positions for their friends at VOA. Most of the previous and current BBG members have no journalistic experience and are usually political party loyalists. One of the current BBG members, Michael P. Meehan, had been accused of shoving a journalist who tried to pose a question to Massachusetts Democratic US Senate candidate Martha Coakley. The incident did not convince President Obama to withdraw Mr. Meehan nomination to the Board, which is charged, among other things, with supporting media freedom worldwide.

The BBG executive staff, which is supposed to execute orders from the Board, often pushes forward its own agenda and has had a large share of blunders over the years. In 2008, BBG executives had eliminated VOA radio broadcasts to Russia just days before the Russian military attack on Georgia and had plans to shut down VOA radio broadcasts in Georgian. They also had put in place policies to force experienced VOA journalists into retirement. BBG executives claim that these are cost-saving measures while at the same time beefing up several private broadcasting entities, each one of which has its own costly administrative bureaucracy. Free Media Online has learned that recently a VOA executive was suggesting to an experienced older female radio broadcaster in the Russian Service that it was time for her to leave her job.

Such practices have allowed VOA and BBG executives to bring on board their friends as private contractors and consultants. As a result, editorial standards are weakened and the American public loses control over what is being broadcast in its name to audiences overseas. Alhurra was created and programs favorable to the views of Holocaust deniers happened after the previous BBG members had eliminated all Voice of America broadcasts in Arabic.

Dr. Elliott does points out at the end of his recent blog post that according to The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government website: “BBG is 32 of 34 among small agencies, but up 13% from last year. The Surface Transportation Board is number one.”

Missing from Dr. Elliott’s post is any mention of the past attempts by the BBG and the Voice of America (VOA) executive staff to bribe employees into giving them a higher rating on the Federal Employee Satisfaction Survey. In December 2009, one of our regular Free Media Online contributors commented on this Federal survey fraud at the BBG. We are reposting it here in full.

Down The Path Called Dysfunctional – Charges of BBG Federal Survey Fraud

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, December 22, 2009, San Francisco –

The BBG has long been considered one of the worst managed Federal agencies. The current Bush-era members of the bipartisan Board in charge of U.S. international broadcasting are expected to be replaced soon by President Obama’s nominees who now await confirmation by the U.S. Senate. (You would not know it if you open the BBG website.) [President Obama's bipartisan appointees to the BBG have now been in office for several months but have not instituted any significant reforms or made top management changes at the BBG.]

As new BBG members are getting ready to take their positions, the executives responsible for such journalistic and public relations disasters as airing of Holocaust denial propaganda on Alhurra television and discrimination against foreign-born journalists at Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (a case now pending before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg) have been busy making themselves look good to their soon-to-be bosses.

But rather than to improve their management style, the BBG/VOA executive staff used the well-tried method of buying votes that goes back, well, all the way to the Roman times.

“Give them bread and games and they will vote for you.”

We hasten to add that this was not an election fraud, which the last time we checked is still a felony, but a Federal survey fraud. The goal was to make the management look good in a Federal survey that measures employee satisfaction.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) relies on the accuracy and impartiality of these employee surveys to make important decisions about personnel policies. The BBG/VOA executives undermined this process not only at their own agency but for the entire Federal government. Survey results at BBG/VOA can no longer be compared to results at other U.S. government agencies which don’t engage in bribing employees to encourage them to participate.

Giving away prizes is a not-too-subtle form of influencing how employees will vote. Ironically, the same executives, who have no problem ignoring government regulations when they apply to them, have been actively engaged in firing VOA journalists for minor time-and-attendance transgressions. They treat journalists who need to work irregular hours and move around to get their stories as bureaucrats tied to their desks.

What we want to know is whether in addition to pizza, the BBG/VOA executives also provided beer. God forbid if they did, because that would also be against Federal regulations unless they granted themselves a special exemption.

If the soon-to-be active new BBG members in charge of the U.S. international broadcasting empire will not be able to change the management culture at their Agency, we suggest that they pay for regular pizza and beer parties for the BBG and VOA employees. If nothing changes under the new Board, we might as well really go back to the Roman Empire ways of keeping the masses happy.

The following commentary is from The Federalist, one of our regular bloggers who reports on the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Voice of America (VOA).

Down The Path Called Dysfunctional

Just when you thought that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Voice of America (VOA) couldn’t become any more dysfunctional than they already are, comes the following:

The VOA Director, Dan Austin, recently issued an email regarding the results of the 2009 Human Capital Survey. This is the annual survey mandated by Congress of Federal agencies, a snapshot of how the employees of the Federal workforce feel about the agencies they work in. In odd-numbered years, the survey is conducted by each Federal agency. In even-numbered years, the survey is conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), even though some Federal agencies, including BBG/VOA contract with OPM to conduct the survey in the even-numbered years.

At the outset, Austin crows about the increased level of participation in the 2009 survey…up to 58 percent as opposed to the 35 percent in 2008. Austin goes on to make a vague reference to “improvements” in some areas, but key issues, including leadership (i.e., Austin, the BBG and the rest of the senior agency officials) remain areas of concern.

What Austin doesn’t say in his email is that senior agency leadership offered a prize for the agency element with the most participants. That prize is…

A pizza party.

A pizza party?!?

This is quite revealing of the senior VOA leadership attitude toward the Human Capital Survey and by extension, the agency’s employees.

The attitude is quite clear: the senior leadership sees the survey as a trivial, nuisance exercise and the employee workforce as if it were a group of children.

Whatever “improvements” have been claimed in Austin’s email, it is evident that even with a sophomoric attempt at “bribing” employees with a pizza party reward, the real numbers of positive direction are insignificant…and are made even more watered down when measured against the increased participation.

The heart of any survey of this kind are what are commonly referred to as “core issues;” namely, how the execution of the agency’s mission is perceived and where the employees see themselves now and in the future. In view of the increasingly bizarre behavior of its senior officials, employees should be concerned.

The Federalist

December 2009

The BBG has long been considered one of the worst managed Federal agencies. The current Bush-era members of the bipartisan Board in charge of U.S. international broadcasting are expected to be replaced soon by President Obama’s nominees who now await confirmation by the U.S. Senate. (You would not know it if you open the BBG website.)

As new BBG members are getting ready to take their positions, the executives responsible for such journalistic and public relations disasters as airing of Holocaust denial propaganda on Alhurra television and discrimination against foreign-born journalists at Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (a case now pending before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg) have been busy making themselves look good to their soon-to-be bosses.

But rather than to improve their management style, the BBG/VOA executive staff used the well-tried method of buying votes that goes back, well, all the way to the Roman times.

“Give them bread and games and they will vote for you.”

We hasten to add that this was not an election fraud, which the last time we checked is still a felony, but a Federal survey fraud. The goal was to make the management look good in a Federal survey that measures employee satisfaction.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) relies on the accuracy and impartiality of these employee surveys to make important decisions about personnel policies. The BBG/VOA executives undermined this process not only at their own agency but for the entire Federal government. Survey results at BBG/VOA can no longer be compared to results at other U.S. government agencies which don’t engage in bribing employees to encourage them to participate.

Giving away prizes is a not-too-subtle form of influencing how employees will vote. Ironically, the same executives, who have no problem ignoring government regulations when they apply to them, have been actively engaged in firing VOA journalists for minor time-and-attendance transgressions. They treat journalists who need to work irregular hours and move around to get their stories as bureaucrats tied to their desks.

What we want to know is whether in addition to pizza, the BBG/VOA executives also provided beer. God forbid if they did, because that would also be against Federal regulations unless they granted themselves a special exemption.

If the soon-to-be active new BBG members in charge of the U.S. international broadcasting empire will not be able to change the management culture at their Agency, we suggest that they pay for regular pizza and beer parties for the BBG and VOA employees. If nothing changes under the new Board, we might as well really go back to the Roman Empire ways of keeping the masses happy.

The following commentary is from The Federalist, one of our regular bloggers who reports on the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Voice of America (VOA).

Down The Path Called Dysfunctional

Just when you thought that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Voice of America (VOA) couldn’t become any more dysfunctional than they already are, comes the following:

The VOA Director, Dan Austin, recently issued an email regarding the results of the 2009 Human Capital Survey. This is the annual survey mandated by Congress of Federal agencies, a snapshot of how the employees of the Federal workforce feel about the agencies they work in. In odd-numbered years, the survey is conducted by each Federal agency. In even-numbered years, the survey is conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), even though some Federal agencies, including BBG/VOA contract with OPM to conduct the survey in the even-numbered years.

At the outset, Austin crows about the increased level of participation in the 2009 survey…up to 58 percent as opposed to the 35 percent in 2008. Austin goes on to make a vague reference to “improvements” in some areas, but key issues, including leadership (i.e., Austin, the BBG and the rest of the senior agency officials) remain areas of concern.

What Austin doesn’t say in his email is that senior agency leadership offered a prize for the agency element with the most participants. That prize is…

A pizza party.

A pizza party?!?

This is quite revealing of the senior VOA leadership attitude toward the Human Capital Survey and by extension, the agency’s employees.

The attitude is quite clear: the senior leadership sees the survey as a trivial, nuisance exercise and the employee workforce as if it were a group of children.

Whatever “improvements” have been claimed in Austin’s email, it is evident that even with a sophomoric attempt at “bribing” employees with a pizza party reward, the real numbers of positive direction are insignificant…and are made even more watered down when measured against the increased participation.

The heart of any survey of this kind are what are commonly referred to as “core issues;” namely, how the execution of the agency’s mission is perceived and where the employees see themselves now and in the future. In view of the increasingly bizarre behavior of its senior officials, employees should be concerned.

The Federalist

December 2009

FreeMediaOnline.org,  Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, June 26, 2009, San Francisco – Ronald Reagan’s strong response to the imposition of martial law  against the independent Solidarity trade union in Poland in 1981 was distinctly different from President Barack Obama’s nuanced comments about the crackdown on demonstrators in Iran in the aftermath of the disputed Iranian presidential elections. While President Obama may have wanted to show his appreciation of the subtleties of Iranian politics, his public statements projected around the world a sense of confusion and weakness instead of showing firm American support for human rights and democracy.   

Intellectually, President Obama is right that the current situation in Iran is not the same as the communist crackdown on Solidarity in Poland in the 1980′s and may require a different policy response from the way President Reagan dealt with communist regimes. But the right course of improving communications with the Muslim world, set by President Obama’s speech in Cairo, was undermined by his initial refusal to speak out strongly against violations of human rights in Iran. He may have lost some of the earlier respect among supporters of democracy in the Middle East and weakened his position vis-a-vis America’s most determined enemies.

President Obama is right that President George W. Bush had made monumental mistakes by his unsophisticated and interventionist approach to the Muslim world while appeasing other authoritarian rulers, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Public diplomacy mistakes by the Bush Administration are too numerous to list, but U.S. international broadcasting initiatives during the last eight years serve as a good example. The Bush-appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) eliminated all Voice of America (VOA) highly-respected Arabic news programs and created Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, which are viewed in the Middle East and by independent experts in the U.S. as propaganda stations that lack journalistic standards, credibility and audience. Alhurra had broadcast unchallenged statements by Holocaust deniers at a conference in Tehran organized by no other than President Ahmadinejad. The BBG  had also eliminated Voice of America Russian radio programs just 12 days before the Russian army invaded the disputed parts of the Republic of Georgia. Democrats serving as members of the bipartisan BBG, including former BBG member Edward E. Kaufman, who has replaced Vice President Joe Biden as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, had been instrumental in helping the Bush Administration to make and implement many of the misguided decisions that have replaced objective journalism by the Voice of America with crude propaganda that damages America’s reputation and interests abroad.

President Obama is right in offering a new style of public diplomacy in the Middle East and throughout the world. He did not go to Alhurra to give his first interview targeted for the Middle East but chose an Arab TV network instead. Unfortunately, he still does not have around him enough good advisors who could help shape all of his public statements on human rights and freedom of expression issues, especially in times of crisis, so that he and his Administration do not appear at times as being intimidated by dictators of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s kind or appear naive and impulsive like President Bush.

As someone who was in charge of Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Poland during the Solidarity period, I agree that the two situations — the imposition of the martial law in Poland in December 1981 and the crackdown on demonstrations in Iran in June 2009 – are not identical. They both required, however, from the President of the United States a quick and decisive public response that would not be misinterpreted by foreign leaders and public opinion. Unfortunately, President Obama did not pass this latest test with flying colors.

Undoubtedly, he is a highly intelligent leader and hopefully capable of making right assessments and decisions. His reading of the situation in Iran may be in some ways correct, but his initial public response to this latest crisis was insufficient and quite wrong. He may have been told that workers and intellectuals in Iran are not as united against the religious regime as the Poles were against the communists in the 1980s. America was never seen by the vast majority of the Polish people as a threatening imperial power; Russia was. On the contrary,  most Poles saw America as an only major ally that could help them free themselves from communism and Soviet domination. And unlike the religious authorities in Iran, the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II were on the side of striking workers, protesting intellectuals and students.

But while the situation in Iran in 2009 is in some ways different from Solidarity’s struggles in Poland in the 1980s, the need for moral support for pro-democracy Iranian reformers is now just as urgent as support for Lech Walesa was for the Reagan White House.  To achieve their goals,  the reform-minded, largely urban Iranians who are behind the street protests could learn from Solidarity’s success in Poland by sticking to their non-violent posture. They could also follow the example of Solidarity’s intellectual advisers, who had shaped the alliance with the Polish industrial workers, by making a similar effort in reaching out to the poor, highly religious, and anti-Western rural voters who tend to support President Ahmadinejad and the clerical regime.

Even in Poland, where conditions were more favorable to creating a democratic society, the solidarity-building process between intellectuals and workers was long and arduous. It took several decades before the Polish society finally united to a sufficient degree against the communist rule. Strong but not overly aggressive statements from President Reagan, and radio broadcasts by the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, had helped the Poles in their struggle for freedom.

President Obama’s speech in Cairo, offering a new approach in dealing with the Muslim world, was a great public diplomacy success and was  seen in the region as a new beginning. Unfortunately, public diplomacy experts at the White House and the State Department were not able to show a similar sophistication when a sudden crisis developed in Iran. President Obama’s overwhelming public concern how his comments in support for the protesting Iranians might be perceived by anti-Western, anti-democratic, and pro-clerical forces was clearly not the right response and opened him to criticism from his Republican opponents.

The White House could have taken a lesson or two from President Reagan on how to articulate a strong public diplomacy message that strikes the right balance between legitimate policy concerns and the impact of presidential statements on public opinion.  It’s good for the president of the United States to be aware of all the subtleties of foreign policy, but in some situations speaking publicly about them sends a wrong message to both supporters and enemies of democracy. Reagan knew how to use public comments to project a strong and confident image abroad while still being able to practice diplomacy when it served America’s interests and the cause of freedom.

In responding to the crackdown on Solidarity In 1981, President Reagan expressed America’s unqualified support for freedom without any concern that he would be criticized in Moscow and Warsaw for interfering in Poland’s domestic politics or trying to undermine the Polish communist regime’s close links with the Soviet Union. He was still able to engage later in successful negotiations with Soviet and Polish communist leaders when they were already critically weakened by America’s resolve to support freedom. Reagan was decisive but not intellectually inflexible like President George W. Bush. His was the right approach, and history has proved him right.

President Reagan’s Address to the Nation About Christmas and the Situation in Poland, December 23, 1981

I urge the Polish Government and its allies to consider the consequences of their actions. How can they possibly justify using naked force to crush a people who ask for nothing more than the right to lead their own lives in freedom and dignity? Brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics.

Poland needs cooperation between its government and its people, not military oppression. If the Polish Government will honor the commitments it has made to human rights in documents like the Gdansk agreement, we in America will gladly do our share to help the shattered Polish economy, just as we helped the countries of Europe after both World Wars.

President Obama’s reaction to street demonstrations in Iran was markedly different in an interview with Harry Smith of CBS News, June 19, 2009.

CBS News Harry Smith: Let’s move on to the news of the day.  The Ayatollah Khamenei gave his speech today, gave his sermon.  He said that the election in Iran was, in fact, legitimate.  He said, “The street demonstrations are unacceptable.”  Do you have a message for those people in the street?

President Obama:  I absolutely do.  First of all, let’s understand that this notion that somehow these hundreds of thousands of people who are pouring into the streets in Iran are somehow responding to the West or the United States, that’s an old distraction that I think has been trotted out periodically.  And that’s just not going to fly.

CBS News Harry Smith: People in this country say you haven’t said enough, that you haven’t been forceful enough in your support for those people in the street, and which you say? 

President Obama: To which I say the last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. That’s what they do. That’s what we’ve already seen. We shouldn’t be playing into that. There should be no distractions from the fact that the Iranian people are seeking to let their voices be heard.

Now, what we can do is bear witness and say to the world that the, you know, incredible demonstrations that we’ve seen is a testimony to, I think what Dr. King called the the arc of the moral universe. It’s long but it bends towards justice.

President Obama is right that the United States should not be seen as directly interfering in domestic Iranian politics, as this may hurt pro-democratic forces. But there is a big difference between actual interference and strong public statements in support of human rights abroad, especially in a crisis situation. Regardless of what President Obama says or does not say, Ahmadinejad’s supporters will still claim — as they have – that the United States is creating unrest in Iran. But if President Obama had taken a more Reagan-like approach in his public statements, while still maintaining diplomatic flexibility – supporters of human rights around the world would not be discouraged and enemies of freedom would not see him and the United States as confused by the events in Iran and weak against dictators. If the president’s public diplomacy advisers knew what they were doing, this would not have become an issue for the new administration. It is possible to have a sophisticated public diplomacy strategy in the Middle East without appearing too cautious in support of democracy and freedom of expression.

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980′s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

Wojtyla's Women by Ted Lipien

About FreeMediaOnline.org

FreeMediaOnline.org is a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide. 

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

FreeMediaOnline.org,  Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, June 26, 2009, San Francisco – Ronald Reagan’s strong response to the imposition of martial law  against the independent Solidarity trade union in Poland in 1981 was distinctly different from President Barack Obama’s nuanced comments about the crackdown on demonstrators in Iran in the aftermath of the disputed Iranian presidential elections. While President Obama may have wanted to show his appreciation of the subtleties of Iranian politics, his public statements projected around the world a sense of confusion and weakness instead of showing firm American support for human rights and democracy.   

Intellectually, President Obama is right that the current situation in Iran is not the same as the communist crackdown on Solidarity in Poland in the 1980′s and may require a different policy response from the way President Reagan dealt with communist regimes. But the right course of improving communications with the Muslim world, set by President Obama’s speech in Cairo, was undermined by his initial refusal to speak out strongly against violations of human rights in Iran. He may have lost some of the earlier respect among supporters of democracy in the Middle East and weakened his position vis-a-vis America’s most determined enemies.

President Obama is right that President George W. Bush had made monumental mistakes by his unsophisticated and interventionist approach to the Muslim world while appeasing other authoritarian rulers, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Public diplomacy mistakes by the Bush Administration are too numerous to list, but U.S. international broadcasting initiatives during the last eight years serve as a good example. The Bush-appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) eliminated all Voice of America (VOA) highly-respected Arabic news programs and created Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, which are viewed in the Middle East and by independent experts in the U.S. as propaganda stations that lack journalistic standards, credibility and audience. Alhurra had broadcast unchallenged statements by Holocaust deniers at a conference in Tehran organized by no other than President Ahmadinejad. The BBG  had also eliminated Voice of America Russian radio programs just 12 days before the Russian army invaded the disputed parts of the Republic of Georgia. Democrats serving as members of the bipartisan BBG, including former BBG member Edward E. Kaufman, who has replaced Vice President Joe Biden as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, had been instrumental in helping the Bush Administration to make and implement many of the misguided decisions that have replaced objective journalism by the Voice of America with crude propaganda that damages America’s reputation and interests abroad.

President Obama is right in offering a new style of public diplomacy in the Middle East and throughout the world. He did not go to Alhurra to give his first interview targeted for the Middle East but chose an Arab TV network instead. Unfortunately, he still does not have around him enough good advisors who could help shape all of his public statements on human rights and freedom of expression issues, especially in times of crisis, so that he and his Administration do not appear at times as being intimidated by dictators of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s kind or appear naive and impulsive like President Bush.

As someone who was in charge of Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Poland during the Solidarity period, I agree that the two situations — the imposition of the martial law in Poland in December 1981 and the crackdown on demonstrations in Iran in June 2009 – are not identical. They both required, however, from the President of the United States a quick and decisive public response that would not be misinterpreted by foreign leaders and public opinion. Unfortunately, President Obama did not pass this latest test with flying colors.

Undoubtedly, he is a highly intelligent leader and hopefully capable of making right assessments and decisions. His reading of the situation in Iran may be in some ways correct, but his initial public response to this latest crisis was insufficient and quite wrong. He may have been told that workers and intellectuals in Iran are not as united against the religious regime as the Poles were against the communists in the 1980s. America was never seen by the vast majority of the Polish people as a threatening imperial power; Russia was. On the contrary,  most Poles saw America as an only major ally that could help them free themselves from communism and Soviet domination. And unlike the religious authorities in Iran, the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II were on the side of striking workers, protesting intellectuals and students.

But while the situation in Iran in 2009 is in some ways different from Solidarity’s struggles in Poland in the 1980s, the need for moral support for pro-democracy Iranian reformers is now just as urgent as support for Lech Walesa was for the Reagan White House.  To achieve their goals,  the reform-minded, largely urban Iranians who are behind the street protests could learn from Solidarity’s success in Poland by sticking to their non-violent posture. They could also follow the example of Solidarity’s intellectual advisers, who had shaped the alliance with the Polish industrial workers, by making a similar effort in reaching out to the poor, highly religious, and anti-Western rural voters who tend to support President Ahmadinejad and the clerical regime.

Even in Poland, where conditions were more favorable to creating a democratic society, the solidarity-building process between intellectuals and workers was long and arduous. It took several decades before the Polish society finally united to a sufficient degree against the communist rule. Strong but not overly aggressive statements from President Reagan, and radio broadcasts by the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, had helped the Poles in their struggle for freedom.

President Obama’s speech in Cairo, offering a new approach in dealing with the Muslim world, was a great public diplomacy success and was  seen in the region as a new beginning. Unfortunately, public diplomacy experts at the White House and the State Department were not able to show a similar sophistication when a sudden crisis developed in Iran. President Obama’s overwhelming public concern how his comments in support for the protesting Iranians might be perceived by anti-Western, anti-democratic, and pro-clerical forces was clearly not the right response and opened him to criticism from his Republican opponents.

The White House could have taken a lesson or two from President Reagan on how to articulate a strong public diplomacy message that strikes the right balance between legitimate policy concerns and the impact of presidential statements on public opinion.  It’s good for the president of the United States to be aware of all the subtleties of foreign policy, but in some situations speaking publicly about them sends a wrong message to both supporters and enemies of democracy. Reagan knew how to use public comments to project a strong and confident image abroad while still being able to practice diplomacy when it served America’s interests and the cause of freedom.

In responding to the crackdown on Solidarity In 1981, President Reagan expressed America’s unqualified support for freedom without any concern that he would be criticized in Moscow and Warsaw for interfering in Poland’s domestic politics or trying to undermine the Polish communist regime’s close links with the Soviet Union. He was still able to engage later in successful negotiations with Soviet and Polish communist leaders when they were already critically weakened by America’s resolve to support freedom. Reagan was decisive but not intellectually inflexible like President George W. Bush. His was the right approach, and history has proved him right.

President Reagan’s Address to the Nation About Christmas and the Situation in Poland, December 23, 1981

I urge the Polish Government and its allies to consider the consequences of their actions. How can they possibly justify using naked force to crush a people who ask for nothing more than the right to lead their own lives in freedom and dignity? Brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics.

Poland needs cooperation between its government and its people, not military oppression. If the Polish Government will honor the commitments it has made to human rights in documents like the Gdansk agreement, we in America will gladly do our share to help the shattered Polish economy, just as we helped the countries of Europe after both World Wars.

President Obama’s reaction to street demonstrations in Iran was markedly different in an interview with Harry Smith of CBS News, June 19, 2009.

CBS News Harry Smith: Let’s move on to the news of the day.  The Ayatollah Khamenei gave his speech today, gave his sermon.  He said that the election in Iran was, in fact, legitimate.  He said, “The street demonstrations are unacceptable.”  Do you have a message for those people in the street?

President Obama:  I absolutely do.  First of all, let’s understand that this notion that somehow these hundreds of thousands of people who are pouring into the streets in Iran are somehow responding to the West or the United States, that’s an old distraction that I think has been trotted out periodically.  And that’s just not going to fly.

CBS News Harry Smith: People in this country say you haven’t said enough, that you haven’t been forceful enough in your support for those people in the street, and which you say? 

President Obama: To which I say the last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. That’s what they do. That’s what we’ve already seen. We shouldn’t be playing into that. There should be no distractions from the fact that the Iranian people are seeking to let their voices be heard.

Now, what we can do is bear witness and say to the world that the, you know, incredible demonstrations that we’ve seen is a testimony to, I think what Dr. King called the the arc of the moral universe. It’s long but it bends towards justice.

President Obama is right that the United States should not be seen as directly interfering in domestic Iranian politics, as this may hurt pro-democratic forces. But there is a big difference between actual interference and strong public statements in support of human rights abroad, especially in a crisis situation. Regardless of what President Obama says or does not say, Ahmadinejad’s supporters will still claim — as they have – that the United States is creating unrest in Iran. But if President Obama had taken a more Reagan-like approach in his public statements, while still maintaining diplomatic flexibility – supporters of human rights around the world would not be discouraged and enemies of freedom would not see him and the United States as confused by the events in Iran and weak against dictators. If the president’s public diplomacy advisers knew what they were doing, this would not have become an issue for the new administration. It is possible to have a sophisticated public diplomacy strategy in the Middle East without appearing too cautious in support of democracy and freedom of expression.

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980′s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

Wojtyla's Women by Ted Lipien

About FreeMediaOnline.org

FreeMediaOnline.org is a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide. 

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

FreeMediaOnline.org,  Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, June 04, 2009, San Francisco – President Obama’s recent announcement of a new Global Engagement Directorate that will combine ”diplomacy, communications, international development and assistance” was short on specifics how this new structure might change the focus of U.S. public diplomacy and broadcasting initiatives. That’s hardly surprising, considering that the White House has to deal with many other seemingly more pressing problems. But when the Administration finally starts making hard decisions on global engagement, a greater appreciation of history and foreign cultures could help return some sanity and accountability to these programs. The President and the Senate also have to make better choices in selecting key officials responsible for international communications and avoid the temptation to use propaganda rather than dialogue and journalism in communicating with the Muslim world.  Such officials should be appointed and confirmed based on their qualifications as foreign policy analysts and international media experts rather than selected because of political loyalty or the size of their political contributions. Finally, there is no reason why American taxpayers should continue to fund many of the programs created during the Bush Administration that at best don’t work and often damage America’s image abroad. 

Propaganda Is Out, Journalism and Culture Is In – We Hope

If the White House is serious about avoiding past mistakes,  what’s clearly needed in communicating with the rest of the world is a more sophisticated approach that draws on what is best in American diplomacy, culture and objective journalism. Much will depend on what kind of people are put in charge of representing America to the world. They should appreciate what’s best in American culture.  The Administration should look for people who would be in the same league as Edward R. Murrow, who was President Kennedy’s choice to head the now defunct United States Information Agency (USIA), or John Chancellor, President Johnson’s choice to head the Voice of America (VOA) in the days when the White House appreciated the experience of professional journalists. 

The last thing America needs is leaving public diplomacy in the hands of obscure political loyalists who make private business deals on taxpayer-paid trips abroad and help their  business associates get hired as government consultants at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages, or more accurately mismanages, U.S. international broadcasts. It’s hard to imagine that the late Armand Hammer, a U.S. business tycoon who made profitable trade deals with Lenin and Stalin, would have been put in charge of U.S. broadcasting during the Cold War, or that the late Edward E. Murrow would be discussing  private business deals with President Putin’s associates on a trip to Moscow if he were now in charge of these broadcasts. But such  apparent conflicts of interest and other abuses were common at the Broadcasting Board of Governors during the Bush Administration. The BBG has been consistently rated in government surveys as one of the worst managed Federal agencies. Read The Washington Post column by Joe Davidson: Employee Poll Makes VOA’s Parent the Worst Place to Work.

Under President Bush, political appointees selected to run State Department’s public diplomacy programs and U.S. international broadcasting were political operatives, advertising executives and mirror entrepreneurs who proved their value to the White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress with political contributions and loyal support. (The BBG is by law bipartisan and must include members of both parties, thus both the Bush White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress share the blame for selecting these individuals.) They were rewarded with jobs for which they were completely unsuited and unprepared.

It is not surprising, therefore, that during the past ten years, Under Secretaries of State for Public Diplomacy and members of the BBG have brought once sophisticated cultural and broadcasting programs to a new low level of simplistic and counterproductive propaganda. They promoted advertising and marketing campaigns that admittedly may sometimes produce desired results in a U.S. domestic business setting but turned out to be ineffective and outright offensive when applied to public diplomacy and international broadcasting. And that’s exactly what these political appointees who lacked any substantive experience in foreign policy, human rights and journalism, have done in trying to communicate America’s message to foreign audiences, especially in the Middle East.

Bring “American” Brand Back

BBG consultants declared “America” as a brand name not to be used in the Middle East and came up with a GM-like collection of new names and new private broadcasting initiatives, each one costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars. Since their creators lacked an even basic understanding of Arab culture and refused to listen to advice from area experts, there was no chance that they could be successful. And by all accounts, they were not. They should have asked themselves why the British, who after all perfected serious radio journalism for audiences abroad, did not feel the need to dilute the BBC World Service brand with new stations under many different names. 

Returning to a more sophisticated approach, using high-level cultural diplomacy and serious news broadcasts, may not be easy, as much of the knowledge and experience of previous decades has been destroyed and will take time to  rebuild. The only thing left of sophisticated news analysis and cultural programs once available on the Voice of America are old audio and text files of interviews with important cultural figures in the Arab world. They have been archived by the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, where some U.S. diplomats and local Egyptian employees still understand their value. It’s this kind of understanding and cultural sensitivity that needs to be brought back. Link to Egyptian Treasures from VOA on the U.S. Embassy Cairo website.

The BBG eliminated all VOA Arabic language programs to create privately-run Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. The programming philosophy of these stations, developed by former BBG member Norman Pattiz, a Democrat  – who despite being then Senator Joe Biden’s protege worked closely with neoconservatives in the Bush Administration – specifically rejected anything cultural in U.S. international broadcasting above the level of Brittney Spears. BBG members claimed that their market research supported programming derived from Hollywood and popular culture. Their professional background, however, made it impossible for them to conduct a sophisticated analysis that would take into consideration Middle Eastern history, cultural sensitivities, and political implications of their programming choices.

The Obama Administration would do well by quickly reversing many of the BBG’s decisions of the past decade. Correcting these mistakes would greatly improve America’s image abroad and save U.S. taxpayers’ money. “American” brand  should be brought back by making the Voice of America again a primary U.S. international broadcaster. VOA broadcasts and Internet site in Arabic should be restored as soon as possible.

Sources of Failure

How did U.S. international broadcasting go from a series of great successes during the Cold War to disastrous results in the Middle East in the last decade? While the simplistic worldview adopted by the Bush Administration bears some of the blame, the BBG and its members have made a bad situation far worse than it had to be.  These well meaning but completely miscast individuals, most of them with backgrounds in small domestic U.S. businesses, took a Cold War concept of surrogate broadcasting — which in any case was totally unsuitable for the Middle East – and compounded their error by removing from it one element that had made the original surrogate broadcaster – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty –  vastly successful in broadcasting to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. That element was a high level intellectual and cultural program content developed by local journalists, writers, artists, and intellectuals — not  U.S. advertising experts and political loyalists based in Washington, D.C.

Not satisfied with silencing Voice of America broadcasts in Arabic, the BBG members and their private consultants destroyed cultural uniqueness and effectiveness of RFE/RL Russian broadcasts and terminated VOA radio to Russia just a few days before the Russian army invaded Georgia. FreeMediaOnline.org reported that only one BBG member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum — the only working journalist on the Board – had the courage to to oppose these cuts and spoke out against other abuses, including an ultimately unsuccessful effort by a former BBG chairman James K. Glassman to hire Paula Zahn as the Board’s high profile spokesperson while VOA broadcasts to critical countries were being eliminated. Paula Zahn declined the job offer as a private contractor that would have cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. James K. Glassman, who ended up as President Bush’s last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, refused to resume VOA Russian radio broadcasts during the Russian-Georgian conflict.

In the process of expanding their power, BBG members deprived  foreign journalists working for their surrogate broadcasters of any measure of independence and authority, which was one of the key elements of success of U.S. broadcasts during the Cold War. At the same time, they failed to provide clear editorial and policy guidelines — another key element that previous American management teams were usually able to put in place successfully by working in partnership with foreign journalists. Those who dared to oppose BBG’s misguided ideas were fired or found their programs eliminated. To cover up their mistakes, the BBG forced foreign employees to sign secrecy agreements and refused to make public independent studies showing the failure of their projects in the Middle East. Read  Report Calls Alhurra A Failure on ProPublica.org.

By all accounts, the broadcasting  Board has been an unmitigated disaster. Some of the abuses are only now beginning to come to light. BBG-approved personnel policies at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which discriminate against foreign-born journalists,  may soon come before the European Court of Human Rights. Close links between the BBG Democrats and neoconservatives in the Bush Administration have proven that the Board does not protect U.S. international broadcasters from political interference with program philosophy and program content.  

The Obama Administration has a choice of abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors and closing down Alhurra Television and other private broadcasting entities created during Bush years. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have a common interest in saving taxpayers money, which are now being wasted on ineffective and duplicate programs.

Alhurra Television and the BBG, however, has some powerful supporters, mostly among Democrats who helped to create Alhurra, including former BBG member Senator Edward E. Kaufman, D-DE, a protege of Vice President Biden.  Read ProPublica.org: Alhurra Bleeding Viewers, Poll Finds, But Spending is Up.

One of the key members of the Obama Administration who may have a say in what happens to the BBG and Alhurra is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She is an ex officio member of the BBG, although she does not attend its meetings. She is usually represented at these meetings by a senior State Department official. While President Obama wisely avoided giving interviews to Alhurra, Secretary Clinton was recently interviewed by the network. Secretary Clinton is a friend of BBG member D. Jeffrey Hirschberg. He was one of the Democrats who worked closely with the Bush White House to create Radio Sawa and Alhurra. Hirschberg, a director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, was also said to be responsible for terminating VOA radio broadcasts to Russia shortly before the Russian invasion of Georgia.

Other than Senator Kaufman and perhaps also Secretary Clinton, Alhurra, which means “The Free One,” seems to have now far fewer supporters, especially among members of Congress. ProPublica.org reported that outraged members of Congress threatened to withhold funding after the network aired a report on a Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran. According to ProPulica.org, “the reporter who covered the conference told viewers that Jews had provided no scientific evidence of the Holocaust.”

As a former acting associate director of the Voice of America (VOA),  I am certain that VOA, the only American-brand broadcaster and a target of numerous BBG program cuts, is capable of providing news and representing America in a credible and responsible manner that will not embarrass the United States. It’s unlikely that VOA would give airtime to Holocaust deniers, as did Alhurra editors and anchors, who apparently felt they had no choice but to follow the BBG dictum of giving the audience what it wants based on market research. Although VOA has had various problems with its broadcasts over the years, it follows much more strict editorial and fiscal standards than the BBG’s favored private broadcasting entities and their contractors.

In some cases, private broadcasting entities and surrogate broadcasters can be effective if they have the right programming philosophy,  proper management and  sufficient autonomy combined with sufficient oversight.  Ultimately, much will depend on the quality and experience of the people the Obama Administration puts in charge of these programs. Their understanding how we can communicate with other nations by presenting what’s best in our culture and intellectual tradition will determine whether these programs will be successful in the future.

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980′s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

About FreeMediaOnline.org

FreeMediaOnline.org is a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide. 

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://govoritamerika.us/zpod/voaradio.swf" height="250" width="520" base="http://govoritamerika.us/zpod/" /]

In a nutshell, the station [Radio Liberty] has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face.

Mario Corti Those among the old KGB and the new FSB , who see the U.S. as an enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

Directors of language services at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. taxpayer-funded international broadcaster with headquarters first in Munich, Germany and now in Prague, the Czech Republic, enjoyed at one time a great deal of authority. They often disagreed over programming issues with the radio station’s American management and on numerous occasions their arguments prevailed. Their expert knowledge of their countries and their cultures was widely respected.

In 1956, the head of Radio Free Europe’s Polish Service, Jan Nowak Jezioranski, successfully resisted pressures to call for a violent overthrow of the communist regime in Poland, knowing that such a call would inevitably lead to a Soviet Army invasion. In 1996, many years after leaving RFE/RL, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. He was able to survive his many battles with his American bosses because ultimately they realized that his knowledge of Poland was more sophisticated than theirs.

In better years, language service directors like Jan Nowak could arrange face-to-face meetings with individual members of RFE/RL’s previous oversight body, the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), who actively sought their opinions on programming issues and acted as advisers rather than as micromanaging CEOs.

Rank and file journalists working at RFE/RL were also unafraid to voice their dissent as their rights and fair treatment were protected by German labor laws and membership in professional unions.

A drastic change in this tradition of dialogue and tolerance of dissent occurred in the 1990s with the creation of a new oversight agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the move of RFE/RL from Germany to the Czech Republic, and the arrival of a new American management team selected by the BBG. Using a communist era Czech law still on the books, BBG and RFE/RL lawyers worked hard to find ways to deny their journalists in the Czech Republic the right to form an effective union. Foreign journalists employed by RFE/RL were deprived of many of the protections of both Czech and American labor laws.

The most dramatic change, however, occurred in the status of RFE/RL language service directors. They lost practically all of their previous authority and direct access to BBG members. The new RFE/RL management insisted that they must report only to them and follow an entirely new programming philosophy developed by a key Board member Norman Pattiz for Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. These were the two new private broadcasting networks for the Middle East which Mr. Pattiz, a Democrat, created in close cooperation with the Bush White House. His preferred talk show and music format, which he imposed on Middle Eastern broadcasting while terminating all Voice of America Arabic programs with their more serious news and cultural content, as well as his authoritarian radio management style more suitable for the competitive American market than for a multicultural journalistic institution with a mission of supporting freedom of expression, was also being forced on RFE/RL.

If language service directors resisted these changes, their new American bosses were more than ready to fire them or to eliminate their broadcasts altogether, and many lost their jobs and their programs. They were further humiliated by having to sign secrecy agreements to receive their severance pay. It is highly ironic that this condition was being imposed by a publicly-funded institution that claims to promote openness and transparency in the countries to which it broadcasts. The main purpose of this policy, it seems, was to hide management mistakes from the Administration, the U.S. Congress, and American public. Dissent over programming issues that could help identify waste of taxpayers money and problems, such as airing statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra Television, was ruthlessly stamped out at the stations under BBG’s management, including RFE/RL.

The consequences of the new BBG management style were disastrous in terms of journalistic integrity, mission effectiveness and audience ratings for RFE/RL, as they were for BBG broadcasting in the Middle East and for the Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, D.C., which is also managed by the BBG. BBG decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia, just 12 days before the Russian incursion into Georgia last summer, resulted in an unprecedented 98 percent drop in VOA’s audience reach in Russia, from 7.3% in 2007 to 0.2% in 2009 (est.).

Soviet jammers of VOA and RFE/RL shortwave radio signals during the Cold War and media restrictions imposed more recently by the Kremlin had not been nearly as effective in silencing U.S. broadcasts in Russia as BBG’s own actions, supposedly based on solid audience research. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Welsh Cullum, a Republican,  was said to have voted against ending VOA radio programs to Russia and her attempts to resume these broadcasts after the conflict in Georgia flared up were reportedly blocked by other BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans. In the latest Federal Human Capital Survey, the BBG was once again rated by its employees at the very top of the list of the worst-managed federal agencies.

After the move of RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, language service directors and rank and file journalists quickly lost almost all of their previous independence and authority. With each passing year, they became more and more silent. Visits to Prague by BBG members started to resemble meetings of the Soviet Central Committee. Uncomfortable looking Board members sitting on a podium in a long row in the former communist Parliament building gave inconsequential answers to a small number of questions allowed from the audience of employees fearful of losing their jobs and having to go back to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other countries governed by authoritarian regimes.

Even more disturbing for supporters of media freedom, however, were frequent firings of famous journalists, writers and artists who were some of the intellectual giants of international broadcasting. One of those fired was Mario Corti, the former head of RFE/RL’s Russian Service, a distinguished Italian journalist, writer, and analyst of Russian politics, society, and culture, admired  among his colleagues for his intellect and the courage to stand up to the RFE/RL management and the BBG. Another was a famous former Soviet dissident Tengiz Gudava, who after his expulsion from the USSR became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Tengiz Gudava was truly a renaissance man. He had a doctorate degree in biophysics, was a journalist, poet, novelist, and musician. He was also a passionate defender of human rights, for which he had spent five years in a Soviet labor camp. He and Mario Corti were both fired by RFE/RL for resisting programming changes demanded by the station’s American managers and the BBG.

Last month, Tengiz Gudava was killed in Prague under still unexplained circumstances. It does not appear at this time that his death was related to his work as a journalist, but because of Tengis Gudava’s dissident status and his sharp criticism of Radio Liberty’s new programming philosophy, Mario Corti broke his long silence about the circumstances of the conflicts they both had with the station’s management and about their firing. Mario Corti gave an interview to a Georgian-American journalist Ia Merkviladze, which was published in online Russian-language magazine in New York City «Мы здесь», and also spoke with FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, where he sits on the board of directors.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org interview with Mario Corti

 

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Both you and the late Tengiz Gudava had worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as journalists for many years, and you also as director of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service. What did you learn about his death and what can you tell us about him as your friend and a fellow journalist?

MARIO CORTI: Unfortunately, his tragic death is still shrouded in mystery. I grieve, especially for his family.

Tragedy has surrounded many Radio Liberty employees. I have already experienced several deaths of my former Radio Liberty colleagues, among them those who died in undetermined circumstances. There was also a personal tragedy in Tengiz’s life. He totally identified himself with his job at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Because of this, he suffered when he was deprived of his much loved work, his extremely popular and much needed program about relations between various nationalities of the former Soviet Union. Tengiz was able to establish a real dialogue on the air. He built bridges between different cultures and religions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What other Radio Liberty journalists died in mysterious circumstances? Could there have been a link between their journalistic work and their tragic deaths?

MARIO CORTI: Certainly there was a link between a bomb placed at RFE/RL headquarters in Munich back in the 1980s and RFE/RL journalistic activities. Fortunately, no one had died in that attack, but a telephone operator had her face seriously burnt. What made the most impression on me, also because at the time I was the acting director of the Russian Service, was the murder of Molly Riffel-Gordin. She was the anchor of “Contacts”, a very popular program she hosted under the pseudonym of Inna Svetlova. She was shot in her face on July 25 1997 while on her way from the central train station to the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague. Czech and German police worked on the case, which still remains unsolved.

Another tragic although not violent death happened on April 5, 2000. On his way home from work Alexander Batchan died of a heart attack. He was a well known journalist who had previously worked for the Voice of America and had recently moved to RFE/RL. And he was only 47.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Georgian journalist Ia Merkviladze who interviewed you wrote that when he left Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tengiz Gudava was angry and upset and accused RFE/RL management of KGB-ness. What made Mr. Gudava voice such accusations?

MARIO CORTI: Naturally, he was puzzled as to why he and his program were taken off the air. Among other things, he pointed out that some RFE/RL employees were graduates of the university which trained children of party members and nomenklatura for careers as Soviet diplomats and KGB officers. But from my perspective, the push for a drastic change in Radio Liberty’s programming philosophy came primarily from the new American management at RFE/RL, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees RFE/RL, and from their private consultants. They were responsible for eliminating popular programs and taking off the air highly respected and admired radio personalities, including Tengiz Gudava and others.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Until now you were publicly silent about your dispute with the American management at Radio Liberty. What else did you tell about it to the Georgian journalist who interviewed you after Tengiz Gudava’s death?

MARIO CORTI: I told her that I did not leave Radio Liberty voluntarily. The RFE/RL management first removed me from my position as director of the Russian Service, and then fired me. After my removal, I could have left slamming doors, especially since I refused to accept my severance pay when I was told to leave. RFE/RL has a policy of offering severance pay combined with secrecy agreements to dissident journalists to stifle public criticism of management decisions and any future discussion of the management’s mistakes. I could have gotten my ”hush money” had I only agreed to conditions which I considered as highly improper, even indecent, not only in relation to me but to other RFE/RL journalists and the reputation of the radio station itself, as well as the image abroad of America and American institutions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: It seems that despite your disputes with the RFE/RL management, you, Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who had been fired were motivated by a strong desire to save the radio station’s mission as you saw it.

MARIO CORTI: I told the Georgian journalist that I have always had, and still have, great respect and awe for this venerable institution. Its mission is indeed more noble than the judgment and behavior of some individuals who unfortunately happened to work there. I refer here to some of the former American managers. In addition to firing me, they used the pretext of “restructuring” the Russian Service to get rid of  highly talented and experienced journalists who also disagreed with their programming ideas. Unfortunately, the late Tengiz and Serge Iourienen were also among those who had been let go at that time. Another distinguished RFE/RL journalist Lev Roitman, who was also highly critical of the changes being imposed on the Russian Service, left of his own volition.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Can you be more specific as to the circumstances that led to your departure from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty?

MARIO CORTI: It all started with a sudden change in the upper management of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ordered by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Suddenly Jeff Trimble appeared, replacing the very professional Bob Gillette as Radio Liberty Director. Mr. Gillette, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent, was a great journalist and a true gentleman. Then Tom Dine, replaced the competent and very engaged Kevin Klose, a former Washington Post correspondent in Moscow, as the president of the entire corporation. They, in turn, brought their own people and placed them within the organization.

Jeff Trimble, whom Tom Dine called his “eagle,” turned out to be the engine of reform. Neither man had much familiarity with radio journalism and, in my opinion, they did not fit into the radio station milieu. They could never understand that Radio Liberty had its own special culture. At the very mention of the word “tradition” they laughed.

American managers who supported me and the Russian Service were themselves marginalized or forced out by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Fortunately, they went on to other distinguished careers in the private and public sector. After leaving RFE/RL and the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which is part of the BBG, Kevin Klose was hired for a high level executive position at National Public Radio (NPR). Bob Gillette has worked in promoting responsible journalism and media freedom in the Balkans.

As for the team that the BBG brought in to replace them, after some years at RFE/RL Tom Dine returned to lobbying in the United States. Only Jeff Trimble is still associated with U.S. international broadcasting. He eventually replaced Tom Dine and served as RFE/RL’s acting president and is now the executive director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. He was reportedly instrumental in implementing the BBG’s decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian-Georgian war last summer. This move has also led to a tremendous decline in employee morale as well as a historically unprecedented drop in VOA audience ratings in Russia. According to one estimate, the audience reach declined 98 percent in less than a year.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: How did you describe Mr. Dine’s and Mr. Trimble’s role at Radio Liberty to the Georgian journalist?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to leave their own footprint in order to justify their existence to the BBG. Since they were “new” themselves, they thought this meant they should do something different, i.e., “new” in response to the demands from the BBG. In the final analysis, what really happened was just “change for the sake of change,” but it had a profound impact on Radio Liberty’s mission and the talented and dedicated journalists who worked there.

They searched for a formula for success, which they found in Moscow “talk” radio stations such as “Ekho Moskvy”. I don’t want to be misunderstood, “Ekho Moskvy” is a great station and provides a valuable service under somewhat difficult circumstances. But in my opinion, the thinking on the part of RFE/RL’s American managers was simple and superficial: since radio stations like Ekho Moskvy were successful, that meant to the RFE/RL managers that their formula should be copied, especially since it corresponded in some ways with Norman Pattiz’s idea of a successful commercial radio station. To them, this was “new.” To me and others who have known Russia for a long time and worked there sometimes for many years, it was a completely misguided idea.

For once, Moscow stations always had and still have FM frequencies, which Radio Liberty could not obtain then from the Russian authorities and still cannot get them now. It was vital for Radio Liberty to expand distribution of its programs in Russia in other ways, which is not a simple task given the political conditions, but that’s what they needed to focus on. Unfortunately, they had no idea where to start, and yet they didn’t  want to listen to any advice.

Instead of dealing with the real problem of program delivery, program distribution, cooperation with independent media, and media restrictions in Russia, they decided to take the easy but pernicious path of reforming the Russian Service from within, because it was easy and they could not think of anything else to do. Their idea was to change Radio Liberty’s broadcasting in form and content as if this alone could solve the problem of program distribution and prevent a fall in audience ratings. As it turned out, their strategy only made audience ratings fall even faster to a level much lower than ever before, which I’m sure is not what the U.S. Congress and U.S. taxpayers expected from the BBG, but that’s what they got.

The BBG now tries hard to keep this information secret and blames media restrictions in Russia, which do account for some drop in audience ratings for RFE/RL and VOA but cannot be blamed for the dramatic declines resulting from BBG-ordered programming and program delivery changes. For one thing, RFE/RL is still on the same AM frequency in Moscow, but the number of listeners there has been consistently dropping.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What were some of the ideas which were advanced by the consultants hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and implemented by the RFE/RL’s top management?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to concentrate broadcasting on Moscow and St. Petersburg — mainly Moscow. “Forget about the regions,” they told us. They also wanted more talk shows and — this may sound hilarious to those who know something about radio broadcasting in the Soviet Union — to rely on the old Soviet era UKV (Ultra Short Wave) frequencies, which were designed to prevent Soviet citizens from using their radio sets to listen to Western FM stations in border areas, where such signals could be heard. Knowing that UKV receivers were no longer being produced and the band was being phased out, I vigorously objected to their claims that Ultra Short Wave broadcasts were a good alternative, but I think it was one of RFE/RL’s managers who suggested that there are North Korean radio receivers which can pick up these frequencies and are still being sold in Russia. The idea that broadcasting on Soviet era frequencies being phased out can be a reasonable solution was rather typical for the team of RFE/RL managers and their BBG-hired consultants, who were undoubtedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their recommendations.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Did did you make any alternative recommendations to Mr. Dine and Mr. Trimble?

MARIO CORTI: Besides continuing some of the general goals set by my predecessor, the highly admired and respected journalist and manager Yuri Handler, I decided to decentralize Radio Liberty broadcasting, getting away from Moscow-centrism and expanding the network of correspondents in the regions. It seemed to me that people in Moscow knew little of what was happening in the regions, and listeners in the regions highly valued the attention paid to their concerns. I expanded the St. Petersburg bureau and opened a bureau in Ekaterinburg.

Since we did not have at the time and still do not have an FM frequency, I thought that we should rely on medium wave (AM) frequencies as part of a multi-platform program delivery strategy, which would also include traditional shortwave frequencies, Internet,  television, and cooperative projects with independent journalists and media. AM frequencies were more available, some with good signal quality, and had a good geographical reach unlike UKV. In Moscow we had our own license for a medium wave frequency. I found a similar solution in St. Petersburg, which would have allowed us to transmit our signal to the whole north-west of Russia, where most of the population lives. The management again didn’t listen to our recommendations. I also talked to them about the Internet and digital broadcasting. Now it’s commonplace, and tomorrow, will be even more so. They laughed at these ideas and said that BBG consultants knew better what would work and what would not.

I should mention that shortly before my removal as Russian Service director our audience reach in Russia, as reported by the audience research organization contracted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors,  peaked at around six percent, a figure well beyond what RL was able to achieve since. It was then that the new American management decided to put its plan into action and break with the culture, traditions and intellectual sophistication of the radio’s Russian Service. They abandoned the foundations laid by Yuri Handler together with Kevin Klose. They were determined to transform Radio Liberty into more of a “chat” radio, a clone of Ekho Moskvy and Radio Sawa. Again, Ekho Moskvy is a good station, but the RFE/RL management had no way of achieving the necessary signal strength and program distribution, and on top of that they had pretensions to be a real competitor to Ekho Moskvy — something that was totally unreasonable given their interference with programming and the political conditions in Russia. And so on and so forth. Later on, the management closed down the Ekaterinburg bureau and greatly reduced the St. Petersburg bureau staff. When Radio Liberty in St. Petersburg was taken off UKV, the Soviet era frequency pushed by the BBG consultants, nobody had listened to it for a long time. No one, it seems, had access to those “fantastic” North Korean receivers.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: The BBG-ordered research also showed that a focus on human rights and high culture in Radio Liberty programs to Russia was passe and should be replaced. You pointed out that some of the consultants who presented this research had links to former BBG member Norman Pattiz, the chief architect of Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television broadcasts to the Middle East. Were you pressured to change Radio Liberty’s Russian programs to make them conform to the style of Radio Sawa?

MARIO CORTI: One of the reasons given for my removal was that I “resisted changes”. After my removal, the RFE/RL management put their own people in management positions in the Russian Service to carry out their plans. They shut down many cultural programs, including the brilliant and popular broadcasts by Sergei Iourienen. They also shut down serious analytical programs, “Commentators at a Roundtable,” as well as Paramonov’s show (which they later reinstated), shut down Savitsky’s popular program on jazz (recently reinstated). They changed the format of other shows, expanded the number of talk shows, and so on.

In a nutshell, the station has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face. Although not nearly as drastic as the BBG’s new format formula for Russia, a similar process was going on and is still going on in Great Britain at BBC’s Russian Service, which has resulted in vehement protests from a lot of respected people, including famous British academics.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: In your interview with a Georgian journalist you said that Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who were associated with Radio Liberty did not know the full picture of your battles with RFE/RL’s new American management. You also said that with people like that in charge of RFE/RL, “KGB-FSB can sleep soundly.” What did you mean by that?

MARIO CORTI: Let me put it this way. Jeff Trimble and Tom Dine were unhappy with the work of the Russian Service. In particular, Jeff Trimble was unhappy with the Russian Service newscast. I was unhappy too, but for different reasons, I wanted to make it more relevant to people most deprived of access to uncensored information, those who are particularly vulnerable in Russia today.

At one point Trimble – based on a study of our news made by his assistant Michele DuBach who later was appointed by him as Director of Broadcasting – even announced his decision to close our news service. He did not carry it out because he was afraid of a mass rebellion in the Russian Service. To bolster their position in favor of a possible future attempt to get rid of RL Russian Service news, he and Tom Dine ordered outside research. They first applied to the famed Annenberg School of Journalism, which — by the way — recently issued a study highly critical of  BBG’s proud creation Alhurra Television for practicing substandard journalism and lacking audience and effectiveness — a study which the BBG executive staff tried hard to suppress until they were ordered to release it by the Obama Administration.

In the case of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, they didn’t get the negative result they really wanted. The international group of journalists put together by this respected institution [the Annenberg School of Journalism] to evaluate the RL Russian Service came to a generally positive and encouraging conclusion about our performance. I can imagine their surprise when reading the study issued by the Annenberg School of Journalism they discovered that the single most praised feature of our broadcasts was the Russian Service newscast. Then, the management decided to obtain research from Russia on the image of the Russian Service programs among the listeners in Russia. Here again, they miscalculated. The results of this research were also very positive for us.

So here you have three Russian Service success stories in a row: a positive evaluation by the Annenberg School of Journalism, the positive image study, and the peak of around six percent in our audience reach in Russia. So what did RFE/RL management and the BBG do at this point? They hired someone who had previously worked for BBG member Norman Pattiz — it was the latter who had the brilliant idea of creating Sawa Radio and Alhurra Television — and they got exactly the results Jeff Trimble had originally wanted to get. Based on these results, they proceed to “reform” the Russian Service. Great programs were eliminated, audience ratings immediately dropped. I would point out that similar  BBG “reforms” at VOA last year produced an even greater, 98 percent drop in audience reach in Russia; millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been wasted. It’s shameful how the  generosity of the American people in support of much needed broadcasting that promotes understanding between nations and cultures is being abused by these officials.

In my opinion, those among the old KGB and the new FSB officials, who see the U.S. as an enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: When Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based during the Cold War in Munich, West Germany, RFE/RL employees had full protection of the German labor law. The BBG and RFE/RL management used a communist era Czech law to deprive foreign journalists working for them in Prague of some of these basic protections. Do you think that this policy is designed to make journalists more dependent on the management and to stifle independent journalism and criticism at RFE/RL? Are these journalists vulnerable, in your opinion?

MARIO CORTI: Obviously they are vulnerable. Back in Munich many were members of the German journalists unions while others belonged the Newspaper Guild in New York. Nothing like this is true now. Now, according to the RFE/RL new Policy Manual, EEO regulations do not apply to non-American employees. And a Czech Court recently ruled that Czech labor law regulations do not apply to non Czech employees working for RFE/RL. So RFE/RL is allowed to do with its non American and non Czech employees — and they are the majority — whatever it wants, whether it’s right or wrong. They don’t have to worry about any legal consequences. What they don’t realize, however, is that employees without any rights will have little loyalty and little reason to alert the management to possibly fatal journalistic and programming mistakes if voicing dissent can result in them losing their jobs. Hopefully, the European Court of Human Rights, to which some former employees are turning now, or the Obama Administration will soon put a stop to this shameful treatment by RFE/RL and the BBG of its foreign journalists and other  foreign workers.

FreeMediaOnline.org allows republication of its interviews with attribution and link to our site.

 

More about Mario Corti

Mario Corti was born in Italy but his parents took him to Argentina, where he developed a lifelong interest in Russia. Later on he became a fluent Russian speaker and writer. Living in Italy in the 1970s, he was active in defense of human rights in the Soviet Union and published Russian samizdat books, articles and documents.

From 1979 until 2005, he worked at the U.S.-funded international broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He became the head of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service but left the station together with other veteran journalists over a programming dispute with the American management. He is an author of numerous books and articles, many of them published in Russian. Dreif, a book written in Russian about philosophy and culture, was published in Russia and Ukraine in 2002. His book, Salieri i Mozart, on the relationship between the two composers, was published in Russian in 2005. His articles on human rights and Soviet dissent have appeared in several languages in many countries. He speaks Italian, Rusian, English, German, Spanish, and French and has a working knowledge of several other European languages. Dividing his time between Italy and Russia, he now works as a freelance journalist and a consultant for a media group based in Saint Petersburg.

 

More about Tengiz Gudava

Tengiz Gudava, who had a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was a former dissident who organized music concerts in support of human rights in the Soviet Union and spent five years in a labor camp before being expelled to the West in 1987. He joined Radio Liberty and wrote and produced popular programs in defense of human rights for Russian and Georgian shortwave broadcasts.

Gudava was a harsh critic of the current Russian leadership. After he was dismissed from RFE/RL in 2004, he also posted on his personal website biting criticism of Radio Liberty’s new management and programming philosophy. On the night of April 15, Gudava left his Prague apartment on foot to buy cigarettes. He was found unconscious on a road in a secluded area about a 20 minute drive from his home. Police attributed his death to a car accident but could not explain how he ended up in a strange location a long distance away from his apartment in Prague.

This interview was first published by FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 19, 2009, San Francisco.

In a nutshell, the station [Radio Liberty] has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face.

Mario Corti Those among the old KGB and the new FSB , who see the U.S. as an enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

Directors of language services at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. taxpayer-funded international broadcaster with headquarters first in Munich, Germany and now in Prague, the Czech Republic, enjoyed at one time a great deal of authority. They often disagreed over programming issues with the radio station’s American management and on numerous occasions their arguments prevailed. Their expert knowledge of their countries and their cultures was widely respected.

In 1956, the head of Radio Free Europe’s Polish Service, Jan Nowak Jezioranski, successfully resisted pressures to call for a violent overthrow of the communist regime in Poland, knowing that such a call would inevitably lead to a Soviet Army invasion. In 1996, many years after leaving RFE/RL, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. He was able to survive his many battles with his American bosses because ultimately they realized that his knowledge of Poland was more sophisticated than theirs.

In better years, language service directors like Jan Nowak could arrange face-to-face meetings with individual members of RFE/RL’s previous oversight body, the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), who actively sought their opinions on programming issues and acted as advisers rather than as micromanaging CEOs.

Rank and file journalists working at RFE/RL were also unafraid to voice their dissent as their rights and fair treatment were protected by German labor laws and membership in professional unions.

A drastic change in this tradition of dialogue and tolerance of dissent occurred in the 1990s with the creation of a new oversight agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the move of RFE/RL from Germany to the Czech Republic, and the arrival of a new American management team selected by the BBG. Using a communist era Czech law still on the books, BBG and RFE/RL lawyers worked hard to find ways to deny their journalists in the Czech Republic the right to form an effective union. Foreign journalists employed by RFE/RL were deprived of many of the protections of both Czech and American labor laws.

The most dramatic change, however, occurred in the status of RFE/RL language service directors. They lost practically all of their previous authority and direct access to BBG members. The new RFE/RL management insisted that they must report only to them and follow an entirely new programming philosophy developed by a key Board member Norman Pattiz for Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. These were the two new private broadcasting networks for the Middle East which Mr. Pattiz, a Democrat, created in close cooperation with the Bush White House. His preferred talk show and music format, which he imposed on Middle Eastern broadcasting while terminating all Voice of America Arabic programs with their more serious news and cultural content, as well as his authoritarian radio management style more suitable for the competitive American market than for a multicultural journalistic institution with a mission of supporting freedom of expression, was also being forced on RFE/RL.

If language service directors resisted these changes, their new American bosses were more than ready to fire them or to eliminate their broadcasts altogether, and many lost their jobs and their programs. They were further humiliated by having to sign secrecy agreements to receive their severance pay. It is highly ironic that this condition was being imposed by a publicly-funded institution that claims to promote openness and transparency in the countries to which it broadcasts. The main purpose of this policy, it seems, was to hide management mistakes from the Administration, the U.S. Congress, and American public. Dissent over programming issues that could help identify waste of taxpayers money and problems, such as airing statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra Television, was ruthlessly stamped out at the stations under BBG’s management, including RFE/RL.

The consequences of the new BBG management style were disastrous in terms of journalistic integrity, mission effectiveness and audience ratings for RFE/RL, as they were for BBG broadcasting in the Middle East and for the Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, D.C., which is also managed by the BBG. BBG decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia, just 12 days before the Russian incursion into Georgia last summer, resulted in an unprecedented 98 percent drop in VOA’s audience reach in Russia, from 7.3% in 2007 to 0.2% in 2009 (est.).

Soviet jammers of VOA and RFE/RL shortwave radio signals during the Cold War and media restrictions imposed more recently by the Kremlin had not been nearly as effective in silencing U.S. broadcasts in Russia as BBG’s own actions, supposedly based on solid audience research. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Welsh Cullum, a Republican,  was said to have voted against ending VOA radio programs to Russia and her attempts to resume these broadcasts after the conflict in Georgia flared up were reportedly blocked by other BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans. In the latest Federal Human Capital Survey, the BBG was once again rated by its employees at the very top of the list of the worst-managed federal agencies.

After the move of RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, language service directors and rank and file journalists quickly lost almost all of their previous independence and authority. With each passing year, they became more and more silent. Visits to Prague by BBG members started to resemble meetings of the Soviet Central Committee. Uncomfortable looking Board members sitting on a podium in a long row in the former communist Parliament building gave inconsequential answers to a small number of questions allowed from the audience of employees fearful of losing their jobs and having to go back to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other countries governed by authoritarian regimes.

Even more disturbing for supporters of media freedom, however, were frequent firings of famous journalists, writers and artists who were some of the intellectual giants of international broadcasting. One of those fired was Mario Corti, the former head of RFE/RL’s Russian Service, a distinguished Italian journalist, writer, and analyst of Russian politics, society, and culture, admired  among his colleagues for his intellect and the courage to stand up to the RFE/RL management and the BBG. Another was a famous former Soviet dissident Tengiz Gudava, who after his expulsion from the USSR became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Tengiz Gudava was truly a renaissance man. He had a doctorate degree in biophysics, was a journalist, poet, novelist, and musician. He was also a passionate defender of human rights, for which he had spent five years in a Soviet labor camp. He and Mario Corti were both fired by RFE/RL for resisting programming changes demanded by the station’s American managers and the BBG.

Last month, Tengiz Gudava was killed in Prague under still unexplained circumstances. It does not appear at this time that his death was related to his work as a journalist, but because of Tengis Gudava’s dissident status and his sharp criticism of Radio Liberty’s new programming philosophy, Mario Corti broke his long silence about the circumstances of the conflicts they both had with the station’s management and about their firing. Mario Corti gave an interview to a Georgian-American journalist Ia Merkviladze, which was published in online Russian-language magazine in New York City «Мы здесь», and also spoke with FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, where he sits on the board of directors.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org interview with Mario Corti

 

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Both you and the late Tengiz Gudava had worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as journalists for many years, and you also as director of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service. What did you learn about his death and what can you tell us about him as your friend and a fellow journalist?

MARIO CORTI: Unfortunately, his tragic death is still shrouded in mystery. I grieve, especially for his family.

Tragedy has surrounded many Radio Liberty employees. I have already experienced several deaths of my former Radio Liberty colleagues, among them those who died in undetermined circumstances. There was also a personal tragedy in Tengiz’s life. He totally identified himself with his job at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Because of this, he suffered when he was deprived of his much loved work, his extremely popular and much needed program about relations between various nationalities of the former Soviet Union. Tengiz was able to establish a real dialogue on the air. He built bridges between different cultures and religions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What other Radio Liberty journalists died in mysterious circumstances? Could there have been a link between their journalistic work and their tragic deaths?

MARIO CORTI: Certainly there was a link between a bomb placed at RFE/RL headquarters in Munich back in the 1980s and RFE/RL journalistic activities. Fortunately, no one had died in that attack, but a telephone operator had her face seriously burnt. What made the most impression on me, also because at the time I was the acting director of the Russian Service, was the murder of Molly Riffel-Gordin. She was the anchor of “Contacts”, a very popular program she hosted under the pseudonym of Inna Svetlova. She was shot in her face on July 25 1997 while on her way from the central train station to the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague. Czech and German police worked on the case, which still remains unsolved.

Another tragic although not violent death happened on April 5, 2000. On his way home from work Alexander Batchan died of a heart attack. He was a well known journalist who had previously worked for the Voice of America and had recently moved to RFE/RL. And he was only 47.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Georgian journalist Ia Merkviladze who interviewed you wrote that when he left Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tengiz Gudava was angry and upset and accused RFE/RL management of KGB-ness. What made Mr. Gudava voice such accusations?

MARIO CORTI: Naturally, he was puzzled as to why he and his program were taken off the air. Among other things, he pointed out that some RFE/RL employees were graduates of the university which trained children of party members and nomenklatura for careers as Soviet diplomats and KGB officers. But from my perspective, the push for a drastic change in Radio Liberty’s programming philosophy came primarily from the new American management at RFE/RL, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees RFE/RL, and from their private consultants. They were responsible for eliminating popular programs and taking off the air highly respected and admired radio personalities, including Tengiz Gudava and others.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Until now you were publicly silent about your dispute with the American management at Radio Liberty. What else did you tell about it to the Georgian journalist who interviewed you after Tengiz Gudava’s death?

MARIO CORTI: I told her that I did not leave Radio Liberty voluntarily. The RFE/RL management first removed me from my position as director of the Russian Service, and then fired me. After my removal, I could have left slamming doors, especially since I refused to accept my severance pay when I was told to leave. RFE/RL has a policy of offering severance pay combined with secrecy agreements to dissident journalists to stifle public criticism of management decisions and any future discussion of the management’s mistakes. I could have gotten my ”hush money” had I only agreed to conditions which I considered as highly improper, even indecent, not only in relation to me but to other RFE/RL journalists and the reputation of the radio station itself, as well as the image abroad of America and American institutions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: It seems that despite your disputes with the RFE/RL management, you, Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who had been fired were motivated by a strong desire to save the radio station’s mission as you saw it.

MARIO CORTI: I told the Georgian journalist that I have always had, and still have, great respect and awe for this venerable institution. Its mission is indeed more noble than the judgment and behavior of some individuals who unfortunately happened to work there. I refer here to some of the former American managers. In addition to firing me, they used the pretext of “restructuring” the Russian Service to get rid of  highly talented and experienced journalists who also disagreed with their programming ideas. Unfortunately, the late Tengiz and Serge Iourienen were also among those who had been let go at that time. Another distinguished RFE/RL journalist Lev Roitman, who was also highly critical of the changes being imposed on the Russian Service, left of his own volition.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Can you be more specific as to the circumstances that led to your departure from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty?

MARIO CORTI: It all started with a sudden change in the upper management of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ordered by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Suddenly Jeff Trimble appeared, replacing the very professional Bob Gillette as Radio Liberty Director. Mr. Gillette, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent, was a great journalist and a true gentleman. Then Tom Dine, replaced the competent and very engaged Kevin Klose, a former Washington Post correspondent in Moscow, as the president of the entire corporation. They, in turn, brought their own people and placed them within the organization.

Jeff Trimble, whom Tom Dine called his “eagle,” turned out to be the engine of reform. Neither man had much familiarity with radio journalism and, in my opinion, they did not fit into the radio station milieu. They could never understand that Radio Liberty had its own special culture. At the very mention of the word “tradition” they laughed.

American managers who supported me and the Russian Service were themselves marginalized or forced out by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Fortunately, they went on to other distinguished careers in the private and public sector. After leaving RFE/RL and the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which is part of the BBG, Kevin Klose was hired for a high level executive position at National Public Radio (NPR). Bob Gillette has worked in promoting responsible journalism and media freedom in the Balkans.

As for the team that the BBG brought in to replace them, after some years at RFE/RL Tom Dine returned to lobbying in the United States. Only Jeff Trimble is still associated with U.S. international broadcasting. He eventually replaced Tom Dine and served as RFE/RL’s acting president and is now the executive director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. He was reportedly instrumental in implementing the BBG’s decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian-Georgian war last summer. This move has also led to a tremendous decline in employee morale as well as a historically unprecedented drop in VOA audience ratings in Russia. According to one estimate, the audience reach declined 98 percent in less than a year.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: How did you describe Mr. Dine’s and Mr. Trimble’s role at Radio Liberty to the Georgian journalist?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to leave their own footprint in order to justify their existence to the BBG. Since they were “new” themselves, they thought this meant they should do something different, i.e., “new” in response to the demands from the BBG. In the final analysis, what really happened was just “change for the sake of change,” but it had a profound impact on Radio Liberty’s mission and the talented and dedicated journalists who worked there.

They searched for a formula for success, which they found in Moscow “talk” radio stations such as “Ekho Moskvy”. I don’t want to be misunderstood, “Ekho Moskvy” is a great station and provides a valuable service under somewhat difficult circumstances. But in my opinion, the thinking on the part of RFE/RL’s American managers was simple and superficial: since radio stations like Ekho Moskvy were successful, that meant to the RFE/RL managers that their formula should be copied, especially since it corresponded in some ways with Norman Pattiz’s idea of a successful commercial radio station. To them, this was “new.” To me and others who have known Russia for a long time and worked there sometimes for many years, it was a completely misguided idea.

For once, Moscow stations always had and still have FM frequencies, which Radio Liberty could not obtain then from the Russian authorities and still cannot get them now. It was vital for Radio Liberty to expand distribution of its programs in Russia in other ways, which is not a simple task given the political conditions, but that’s what they needed to focus on. Unfortunately, they had no idea where to start, and yet they didn’t  want to listen to any advice.

Instead of dealing with the real problem of program delivery, program distribution, cooperation with independent media, and media restrictions in Russia, they decided to take the easy but pernicious path of reforming the Russian Service from within, because it was easy and they could not think of anything else to do. Their idea was to change Radio Liberty’s broadcasting in form and content as if this alone could solve the problem of program distribution and prevent a fall in audience ratings. As it turned out, their strategy only made audience ratings fall even faster to a level much lower than ever before, which I’m sure is not what the U.S. Congress and U.S. taxpayers expected from the BBG, but that’s what they got.

The BBG now tries hard to keep this information secret and blames media restrictions in Russia, which do account for some drop in audience ratings for RFE/RL and VOA but cannot be blamed for the dramatic declines resulting from BBG-ordered programming and program delivery changes. For one thing, RFE/RL is still on the same AM frequency in Moscow, but the number of listeners there has been consistently dropping.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What were some of the ideas which were advanced by the consultants hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and implemented by the RFE/RL’s top management?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to concentrate broadcasting on Moscow and St. Petersburg — mainly Moscow. “Forget about the regions,” they told us. They also wanted more talk shows and — this may sound hilarious to those who know something about radio broadcasting in the Soviet Union — to rely on the old Soviet era UKV (Ultra Short Wave) frequencies, which were designed to prevent Soviet citizens from using their radio sets to listen to Western FM stations in border areas, where such signals could be heard. Knowing that UKV receivers were no longer being produced and the band was being phased out, I vigorously objected to their claims that Ultra Short Wave broadcasts were a good alternative, but I think it was one of RFE/RL’s managers who suggested that there are North Korean radio receivers which can pick up these frequencies and are still being sold in Russia. The idea that broadcasting on Soviet era frequencies being phased out can be a reasonable solution was rather typical for the team of RFE/RL managers and their BBG-hired consultants, who were undoubtedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their recommendations.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Did did you make any alternative recommendations to Mr. Dine and Mr. Trimble?

MARIO CORTI: Besides continuing some of the general goals set by my predecessor, the highly admired and respected journalist and manager Yuri Handler, I decided to decentralize Radio Liberty broadcasting, getting away from Moscow-centrism and expanding the network of correspondents in the regions. It seemed to me that people in Moscow knew little of what was happening in the regions, and listeners in the regions highly valued the attention paid to their concerns. I expanded the St. Petersburg bureau and opened a bureau in Ekaterinburg.

Since we did not have at the time and still do not have an FM frequency, I thought that we should rely on medium wave (AM) frequencies as part of a multi-platform program delivery strategy, which would also include traditional shortwave frequencies, Internet,  television, and cooperative projects with independent journalists and media. AM frequencies were more available, some with good signal quality, and had a good geographical reach unlike UKV. In Moscow we had our own license for a medium wave frequency. I found a similar solution in St. Petersburg, which would have allowed us to transmit our signal to the whole north-west of Russia, where most of the population lives. The management again didn’t listen to our recommendations. I also talked to them about the Internet and digital broadcasting. Now it’s commonplace, and tomorrow, will be even more so. They laughed at these ideas and said that BBG consultants knew better what would work and what would not.

I should mention that shortly before my removal as Russian Service director our audience reach in Russia, as reported by the audience research organization contracted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors,  peaked at around six percent, a figure well beyond what RL was able to achieve since. It was then that the new American management decided to put its plan into action and break with the culture, traditions and intellectual sophistication of the radio’s Russian Service. They abandoned the foundations laid by Yuri Handler together with Kevin Klose. They were determined to transform Radio Liberty into more of a “chat” radio, a clone of Ekho Moskvy and Radio Sawa. Again, Ekho Moskvy is a good station, but the RFE/RL management had no way of achieving the necessary signal strength and program distribution, and on top of that they had pretensions to be a real competitor to Ekho Moskvy — something that was totally unreasonable given their interference with programming and the political conditions in Russia. And so on and so forth. Later on, the management closed down the Ekaterinburg bureau and greatly reduced the St. Petersburg bureau staff. When Radio Liberty in St. Petersburg was taken off UKV, the Soviet era frequency pushed by the BBG consultants, nobody had listened to it for a long time. No one, it seems, had access to those “fantastic” North Korean receivers.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: The BBG-ordered research also showed that a focus on human rights and high culture in Radio Liberty programs to Russia was passe and should be replaced. You pointed out that some of the consultants who presented this research had links to former BBG member Norman Pattiz, the chief architect of Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television broadcasts to the Middle East. Were you pressured to change Radio Liberty’s Russian programs to make them conform to the style of Radio Sawa?

MARIO CORTI: One of the reasons given for my removal was that I “resisted changes”. After my removal, the RFE/RL management put their own people in management positions in the Russian Service to carry out their plans. They shut down many cultural programs, including the brilliant and popular broadcasts by Sergei Iourienen. They also shut down serious analytical programs, “Commentators at a Roundtable,” as well as Paramonov’s show (which they later reinstated), shut down Savitsky’s popular program on jazz (recently reinstated). They changed the format of other shows, expanded the number of talk shows, and so on.

In a nutshell, the station has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face. Although not nearly as drastic as the BBG’s new format formula for Russia, a similar process was going on and is still going on in Great Britain at BBC’s Russian Service, which has resulted in vehement protests from a lot of respected people, including famous British academics.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: In your interview with a Georgian journalist you said that Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who were associated with Radio Liberty did not know the full picture of your battles with RFE/RL’s new American management. You also said that with people like that in charge of RFE/RL, “KGB-FSB can sleep soundly.” What did you mean by that?

MARIO CORTI: Let me put it this way. Jeff Trimble and Tom Dine were unhappy with the work of the Russian Service. In particular, Jeff Trimble was unhappy with the Russian Service newscast. I was unhappy too, but for different reasons, I wanted to make it more relevant to people most deprived of access to uncensored information, those who are particularly vulnerable in Russia today.

At one point Trimble – based on a study of our news made by his assistant Michele DuBach who later was appointed by him as Director of Broadcasting – even announced his decision to close our news service. He did not carry it out because he was afraid of a mass rebellion in the Russian Service. To bolster their position in favor of a possible future attempt to get rid of RL Russian Service news, he and Tom Dine ordered outside research. They first applied to the famed Annenberg School of Journalism, which — by the way — recently issued a study highly critical of  BBG’s proud creation Alhurra Television for practicing substandard journalism and lacking audience and effectiveness — a study which the BBG executive staff tried hard to suppress until they were ordered to release it by the Obama Administration.

In the case of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, they didn’t get the negative result they really wanted. The international group of journalists put together by this respected institution [the Annenberg School of Journalism] to evaluate the RL Russian Service came to a generally positive and encouraging conclusion about our performance. I can imagine their surprise when reading the study issued by the Annenberg School of Journalism they discovered that the single most praised feature of our broadcasts was the Russian Service newscast. Then, the management decided to obtain research from Russia on the image of the Russian Service programs among the listeners in Russia. Here again, they miscalculated. The results of this research were also very positive for us.

So here you have three Russian Service success stories in a row: a positive evaluation by the Annenberg School of Journalism, the positive image study, and the peak of around six percent in our audience reach in Russia. So what did RFE/RL management and the BBG do at this point? They hired someone who had previously worked for BBG member Norman Pattiz — it was the latter who had the brilliant idea of creating Sawa Radio and Alhurra Television — and they got exactly the results Jeff Trimble had originally wanted to get. Based on these results, they proceed to “reform” the Russian Service. Great programs were eliminated, audience ratings immediately dropped. I would point out that similar  BBG “reforms” at VOA last year produced an even greater, 98 percent drop in audience reach in Russia; millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been wasted. It’s shameful how the  generosity of the American people in support of much needed broadcasting that promotes understanding between nations and cultures is being abused by these officials.

In my opinion, those among the old KGB and the new FSB officials, who see the U.S. as an enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: When Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based during the Cold War in Munich, West Germany, RFE/RL employees had full protection of the German labor law. The BBG and RFE/RL management used a communist era Czech law to deprive foreign journalists working for them in Prague of some of these basic protections. Do you think that this policy is designed to make journalists more dependent on the management and to stifle independent journalism and criticism at RFE/RL? Are these journalists vulnerable, in your opinion?

MARIO CORTI: Obviously they are vulnerable. Back in Munich many were members of the German journalists unions while others belonged the Newspaper Guild in New York. Nothing like this is true now. Now, according to the RFE/RL new Policy Manual, EEO regulations do not apply to non-American employees. And a Czech Court recently ruled that Czech labor law regulations do not apply to non Czech employees working for RFE/RL. So RFE/RL is allowed to do with its non American and non Czech employees — and they are the majority — whatever it wants, whether it’s right or wrong. They don’t have to worry about any legal consequences. What they don’t realize, however, is that employees without any rights will have little loyalty and little reason to alert the management to possibly fatal journalistic and programming mistakes if voicing dissent can result in them losing their jobs. Hopefully, the European Court of Human Rights, to which some former employees are turning now, or the Obama Administration will soon put a stop to this shameful treatment by RFE/RL and the BBG of its foreign journalists and other  foreign workers.

FreeMediaOnline.org allows republication of its interviews with attribution and link to our site.

 

More about Mario Corti

Mario Corti was born in Italy but his parents took him to Argentina, where he developed a lifelong interest in Russia. Later on he became a fluent Russian speaker and writer. Living in Italy in the 1970s, he was active in defense of human rights in the Soviet Union and published Russian samizdat books, articles and documents.

From 1979 until 2005, he worked at the U.S.-funded international broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He became the head of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service but left the station together with other veteran journalists over a programming dispute with the American management. He is an author of numerous books and articles, many of them published in Russian. Dreif, a book written in Russian about philosophy and culture, was published in Russia and Ukraine in 2002. His book, Salieri i Mozart, on the relationship between the two composers, was published in Russian in 2005. His articles on human rights and Soviet dissent have appeared in several languages in many countries. He speaks Italian, Rusian, English, German, Spanish, and French and has a working knowledge of several other European languages. Dividing his time between Italy and Russia, he now works as a freelance journalist and a consultant for a media group based in Saint Petersburg.

 

More about Tengiz Gudava

Tengiz Gudava, who had a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was a former dissident who organized music concerts in support of human rights in the Soviet Union and spent five years in a labor camp before being expelled to the West in 1987. He joined Radio Liberty and wrote and produced popular programs in defense of human rights for Russian and Georgian shortwave broadcasts.

Gudava was a harsh critic of the current Russian leadership. After he was dismissed from RFE/RL in 2004, he also posted on his personal website biting criticism of Radio Liberty’s new management and programming philosophy. On the night of April 15, Gudava left his Prague apartment on foot to buy cigarettes. He was found unconscious on a road in a secluded area about a 20 minute drive from his home. Police attributed his death to a car accident but could not explain how he ended up in a strange location a long distance away from his apartment in Prague.

VOA Responds to Crisis in Georgia

On August 8, 2008, Russia’s military forces in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia began invading Georgian territory and moving toward its capital, Tbilisi. In response to the crisis, VOA increased its daily Georgian radio broadcasts from 30 to 60 minutes on shortwave and FM. VOA’s broadcast is also available live and on-demand on VOA Georgian’s website. VOA’s Russian Service also provided comprehensive coverage of Russia-Georgia conflict.

Even after the crisis started, former BBG members, Edward E. Kaufman (now a Democratic senator from Delaware) and James K. Glassman (former BBG chairman who was also President Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy) rejected urgent pleas from Voice of America journalists to resume VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts to Russia and to the war zone in Georgia. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, Mr. Kaufman blocked a formal request from another BBG member Blanquita Walsh Cullum ( a Republican appointee and the only working journalist serving on the board) to have a new vote on resuming VOA Russian radio programs.

In another part of the budget request, the BBG admits that the Russian service “ceased its radio broadcasts on July 26, 2008,” and “is enhancing its website to appeal to burgeoning web audiences with targeted content.” The document fails to point out that largely as a result of ending VOA Russian radio and television programs, VOA’s annual reach in Russia dropped by 98% from 7.3% in 2007 to 0.2% (est.) in 2009 (another omission). No other international broadcaster, U.S. or foreign, has ever experienced a similarly dramatic fall in ratings. Even a 25% drop would have been a disaster, yet the BBG claims that despite a 98% audience loss VOA “improved its programming to such strategically important countries as… Russia.”

While advocating Internet-only strategy for Voice of America in Russia — rather than far more prudent and far more effective multiple platform program delivery  — the BBG admits in another part of its budget request that the Internet is vulnerable to blockage and censorship by unfriendly governments, ”Governments also target RFE/RL [a BBG-run private broadcaster] with technological disruption, including a global cyber attack in April 2008 which probably originated in Belarus, and Kazakhstan’s blockage of RFE/RL’s Kazakh-language website in the spring of 2008.” Another cyber attack, this time against Georgian websites, occurred during the Russian military intervention in Georgia. A recent article by Understanding Government, “Will America’s Voice Stay Silenced?“, reported on this issue and other problems at the BBG. 

The BBG’s budget request also states that “in response to the crisis, VOA increased its daily Georgian radio broadcasts from 30 to 60 minutes on shortwave and FM.” That statement is only technically correct. What the BBG does not mention is that the broadcasting board also had plans to eliminate all VOA radio programs to Georgia and that the VOA Georgian service was reduced to a handful of journalists who were not able to immediately increase airtime and had to work nonstop for many days just to produce a 30 minute radio program.

The BBG budget request to the U.S. Congress also includes another disingenuous and misleading statement:

VOA Covers Mumbai Terrorist Attacks

VOA’s South Asia Division language services provided wall-to-wall coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, including on-the-ground coverage from stringers, interviews in Pakistan and India, and live call-in shows. VOA Hindi provided its new affiliate Zee TV with reaction from President Bush, President-elect Obama, U.S. officials, experts and members of American-Indian communities.

In fact, shorty before the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the BBG terminated all Voice of America radio broadcasts in Hindi. While bragging and misleading the Congress about its response to the terrorist attacks in India, in another part of the budget request the BBG frankly admits that it plans to close down VOA Hindi service altogether:

BBG proposes to end VOA broadcasts in Croatian, Hindi, and Greek, and discontinue radio rebroadcasts of PNN television programming and one hour daily of original VOA Persian radio.

Another misleading omission in the BBG’s FY 2010 budget request deals with VOA broadcasts to Ukraine:

Ukrainian Language Broadcasting

VOA’s Ukrainian Service continues to have a major impact through its television programming. An October 2008 survey indicated that VOA Ukrainian’s weekly TV programs reach 11.9 percent of the population and that the combined weekly TV, radio, and Internet audience is 14.2 percent (5.7 million people).

In fact, the BBG terminated all VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine on December 31, 2008, a day before Russia cut off deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine and Western Europe in a billing dispute with Kiev, as it had earlier terminated VOA radio to Russia. Yet the BBG describes both Russia and Ukraine as “strategically important countries” for VOA broadcasting and in another part of the FY 2010 budget request says that “Russia has effectively turned into a one-party dictatorship in the past few years.”

The Broadcasting Board of Governor ignored numerous requests from members of Congress not to end VOA radio programming to media-at-risk countries like Russia and Ukraine. The BBG also ignored requests from members of Congress not to end VOA radio programs in Hindi.

According to the BBG’s critics, including BBG employees and their union leaders, misleading and disingenuous statements in the FY 2010 budget request reflect a culture of mismanagement and arrogance that was captured in the OPM’s most recent Human Capital Survey designed to measure employee job satisfaction and confidence in the management. This is what the AFGE Local 1812 government employees union website says about the quality of the management at the Broadcasting Board of Governors:

BBG CLAIMS TITLE AS THE WORST PLACE TO WORK IN GOVERNMENT

DATELINE: Washington, D.C., 01/23/09. AFGE Local 1812 has obtained a copy of the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) ranking of government agencies which included the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) based on the results of the 2008 Human Capital Resources survey. The BBG ranked dead last on three of the four categories the OPM measures in its survey. Finishing second to last in one category prevented an atrocious clean sweep of the four categories measuring the effectiveness of management at the BBG.

The BBG’s management problems are not limited only to federal government workers at the Voice of America working in Washington, D.C. but extend to other BBG-managed  U.S.-funded broadcasting entities throughout the world. Foreign journalists working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a private broadcaster also supervised by the BBG, accuse the management of depriving them, based on national origin, of the same job security and labor protection rights which are available to both American and Czech employees. RFE/RL headquarters are based in Prague, the Czech Republic. RFE/RL’s former acting president, Jeffrey Trimble, is now the BBG’s executive director and was responsible for implementing personnel and other management decisions during the period covered by the Human Capital Survey. He was replaced at RFE/RL in Prague by another BBG-selected official, Dr. Jeffrey Gedmin, a former resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists-at-risk are a group of the most vulnerable contract employees from countries like Russia, Uzbekistan,  Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Afghanistan, Iran and several others. These journalists charge that by taking advantage of the communist era laws still on the books in the Czech Republic, the BBG has restricted their right to challenge unlawful discrimination and employment termination in Czech and U.S. courts.

Two former RFE/RL employees plan to pursue their claims against RFE/RL and the BBG by challenging the communist era Czech laws in the European Court of Human Rights. They have also petitioned United States Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and its supervising Federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

On May 6, the Czech news agency, CTK, and the largest Czech national daily Dnes (Today) reported that the two petitioners, former RFE/RL employees, a Croatian citizen Snjezana Pelivan and Anna Karapetian, an Armenian journalist, are charging BBG and the management of U.S. Congress-funded radio station with fraudulent deception intended to keep RFE/RL foreign personnel in a legal vacuum without court protection in the United States and the Czech Republic.

The BBG has also been severely criticized for imposing its programming and marketing strategy on journalists and forcing them to follow recommendations from uninformed consultants, some of them with links to BBG members, rather than allowing journalists and managers to use their own expert  knowledge of the audience. In an interview scheduled for publication this week, former head of RFE/RL Russian Service, Mario Corti, who was forced out in a programming dispute four years ago, charges that the BBG’s strategy and the American management of the station have destroyed the unique value of Radio Liberty broadcasts in Russia and made them nearly ineffective. Corti is now a manager at a private radio network in Russia. Since his departure, RFE/RL has been criticized by a Russian human rights organization for giving airtime to nationalist extremists known for promoting racist views and its Moscow-based bureau chief was downplaying the impact of the murder of a prominent human rights reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

But one of the most severely criticized BBG operations has been the Alhurra Television program for the Middle East.  According to KEBABfest blog, maintained by Arab-Americans, Alhurra viewers are subjected to “hours of mindless chatter interspersed with shallow assessments of selected current events and random feature stories (some of which are marginally entertaining). There is no depth in the news coverage, nor in the rest of the programming. Rather, there is a failed attempt at fast-paced US-style news that comes off as chaotic and incoherent.” Alhurra was also criticized for giving airtime to Holocaust deniers. A study by researchers for the University of Southern California, who conducted a review of Alhurra broadcasts, concluded that “the quality of Alhurra’s journalism is substandard on several levels“ and that the station has no significant audience in the Middle East.

Not surprisingly, the BBG is presenting Congress with a much rosier picture of Alhurra programming:

Expanding our reach.

The new three-hour daily show Al Youm launched on March 8, 2009 has redefined Alhurra’s voice in the region with an information mix unique in the Middle East today. The new show provides a platform for focusing on the news of the day, discussing compelling social issues, and a spectrum of information not presented anywhere else in the region’s media. The program broadcasts reports directly from the Middle East with hubs in Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, and Jerusalem. The mix from the region and America will continue to capitalize on Alhurra’s ability to provide the people of the Middle East with unique insight into America that will inform their views and opinions of the region, the world, and the United States.

While the original concept for Alhurra’s surrogate broadcasting, based on outdated Cold War models, came from neoconservatives in the Bush White House, programming and marketing strategy for Alhurra, Radio Sawa and other  U.S. broadcasting entities, which is still followed by the BBG, was introduced by former Democratic BBG member Norman Pattiz, founder of U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One and a protege of Vice President Joe Biden when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors FY 2010 Budget Request to the U.S. Congress (link) provides for an interesting reading and is a good example of how government bureaucrats try to hide their mistakes and mismanagement of government resources while asking U.S. taxpayers for more money, said Ted Lipien, former VOA acting associate director, who is now president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit which supports independent journalism worldwide.

In response to the termination of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, FreeMediaOnline.org has helped to launch a Russian-language news website, GovoritAmerika.us, which offers a wide selection of Russian-language news analysis from both U.S. government and nongovernment sources. GovoritAmerika.us is staffed by volunteers and receives no public funding.

WILL AMERICA’S VOICE STAY SILENCED?

07. May 2009
An Understanding Government report

By Mitchell Polman

Washington, D.C. — Since it was founded in 1942, the Voice of America has been just that – a radio voice for the American perspective on the issues of the day and a prime source of information about American society for its overseas audiences. VOA has also brought educational programs to overseas audiences on such issues as public health and business skills. In recent years, however, the broadcasting service has experienced staff cuts, service reductions, and politically-charged controversies.

At the center of the storm has been the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, which oversees U.S. government-funded media outlets. And these problems have arisen while – largely through emergency supplemental appropriations from Congress in the past couple of years – the Broadcasting Board of Governors has seen its budget actually increase. Critics say that the BBG has skewed priorities and has spent money that could have gone to its broadcasting services on wasteful administrative overhead and public relations efforts.

America’s voice in Russia fades to silence

Last year the BBG made the unpopular and unexpected decision to terminate all Russian language shortwave radio and television broadcasts of the Voice of America. It ordered VOA to shift its resources towards Internet-based broadcasting. The decision has been widely criticized, in large part because Internet penetration in Russia is too low – estimated at 20% by some pollsters – to justify ending radio and television broadcasts to the Russian public.

But critics see more than just a mistaken choice of media. Former VOA Deputy Director, and author of the book Voice of America: a History, Alan Heil, Jr., for example, said regarding radio service to Russia that “the Voice of America cannot continue to be silent. It would not only be contrary to the U.S. national interest. It would also be a distinctly untimely disservice to millions of listeners in Russia and the surrounding republics that had, until last July, depended on VOA Russian for more than sixty years as their reliable window on a turbulent world.”

Critics note that it is easier for governments to block websites and control Internet usage than it is to block shortwave radio, and that shortwave radio is more commonplace in conflict zones – where the need for independent media is most vital. The BBG’s decision has been called shortsighted for other reasons, in particular because the VOA could have continued producing shortwave and FM radio as well as television content using its seasoned Russian-language reporting staff – and used it on the Internet as well. Instead, the BBG ordered VOA to produce content only for the VOA website and terminate all Russian language radio and television programming.

And while some in the Broadcasting Board of Governors may consider shortwave radio to be a dying technology, the Russian government apparently does not. As the Voice of America fades as a radio source, Radio Moscow has been renamed the Voice of Russia, and it continues to broadcast in shortwave throughout both Russia and the entire world.

“Runet” – the Internet in Russia

Obviously, there is a vital role for the Internet in America’s information arsenal. In a December 2008 report, the media research group InterMedia said that television remains the dominant source of news coverage in Russia, but that the Internet is growing. 19% of the population, according to InterMedia, reported using the Internet to follow current events in Russia in 2008, up from 13% in 2007.

However, by some estimates only 2% of Russians have broadband service. Without broadband service, listening to radio programs or watching television programs over the Internet can be difficult. Broadband and DSL subscriptions are on the rise, but they are still mostly available in Moscow and St. Petersburg and other major cities. Several companies have large plans to expand their networks. However, as it stands now, many homes can not get even dial-up service for lack of a landline, and it is doubtful that Russian citizens will put up with or pay for watching or listening to a half hour long program on a painfully slow Internet connection. Overall, it seems clear that the share of the Russian population that is not thoroughly “wired” is now unable to be part of the VOA audience.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty gains while VOA loses

The BBG shifted some of VOA’s resources, including radio frequencies, to a different radio broadcaster — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). RFE/RL – known simply as “Svoboda,” or “freedom,” in Russian, was a vital source of information for human rights activists inside the USSR during much of the Cold War. However, the two broadcast entities do not share the same mission or approach to broadcasting, so an expansion of Radio Free Europe cannot be seen as a substitute for what VOA has done in the past.

To begin with, RFE/RL focuses exclusively on news involving the country and region that is broadcasting to, whereas the VOA adds world news and reports on American policies and society. In addition, RFE/RL contracts with private companies overseas or surrogates in places like Moscow to reach its audience. The surrogate companies and their staffs and families are often subject to governmental pressure, intimidation, and threats. The Voice of America, on the other hand, broadcasts directly from Washington and avoids these direct pressures.

Historically, the Voice of America had a larger audience in Russia than RFE/RL has at present. According to InterMedia, VOA’s Russian language service had a cumulative annual audience for 2007 of 6,504,030 people (broadcasting for three hours of radio daily and one hour of TV) while RFE/RL had 3,613,350 people (broadcasting eighteen hours daily on radio). VOA radio had an average weekly listenership of 481,780 listeners, VOA TV had an average weekly viewership of 722,670 viewers and VOA had 120,445 visitors for its website from Russia. These statistics are for Russia only – they do not include Russian language speakers from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan or other former Soviet republics, which are believed to be a substantial audience.

Finally, there is also some dispute about the methodologies being used to determine the number of visits to VOA’s Russian language website. Sources familiar with VOA’s numbers comment that roughly half of the visits to VOA’s Russian language site may actually be coming from inside the United States. Even if this estimate is exaggerated, there is no disputing the fact that the number of VOA website users is far below the audience that VOA TV and radio enjoyed in Russia. The most recent InterMedia study shows VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia dropped by 98% in just one year: from 7.3% in 2007 to an estimated 0.2% in 2009 (0.2% is the VOA Russian Internet reach.) This drop was experienced only by VOA, so it cannot be solely because of the Russian government’s restrictive media policies. Clearly the disappearance of VOA radio service has harmed America’s ability to reach out to Russian citizens.

Reaction from inside and outside Russia

The cutbacks in VOA service have drawn protests from many quarters. On July 31, 2008 a prominent group of human rights activists in St. Petersburg, Russia, including Aleksandr Nikitin, Anna Sharogradskaya, Olga Staravoitova, and lawyer Yuri Schmidt, sent a letter to Congress asking it to intervene with the BBG saying, “(The Russian) public is deprived of objective coverage of events inside the country and abroad. International radio stations broadcasting in Russian and Internet are the only sources of unbiased, balanced, and truthful information, especially analysis of global events. That is why we believe that it is premature to end VOA’s Russian Service broadcast.”

The bi-partisan Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, sent a letter to the Broadcasting Board of Governors in October 2008 protesting the Russian service cutbacks as well as planned reductions in VOA’s Ukrainian and Georgian services then-Chairman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and Ranking Minority Christopher Smith (R-NJ) asked for VOA shortwave radio service to be restored saying, “Freedom of the media in Russia, especially on the airwaves, has been cut to the point that it is extremely difficult for people to hear views other than those espoused by the Kremlin.”

Problems with the BBG decision emerged in stark relief during the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia. Russian language VOA programming went off the air on July 26, less than two weeks before the Russian army entered Georgia on August 7, 2008. Russian speakers in the region thus had one less source for coverage of the war and of the American government’s views. The Georgian language service had also been slated to go off the air, but was granted a reprieve and temporarily increased at the insistence of Congress.

VOA would suffer similar embarrassments in the months ahead as, for example, it terminated Ukrainian language radio service the day before Russia disrupted gas service to Ukraine on January 1, 2009, and when VOA’s highly popular Hindi language radio programs (with an audience of eight million listeners a week) went off the air shortly before the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. After protests from VOA supporters, VOA radio returned on a Moscow-based AM channel for only thirty minutes a day Monday through Friday, down from its previous three hours.

Former VOA Staff Calling for Service Restorations

One of the most prominent critics of the BBG is Ted Lipien, who spent 33 years with the VOA as a reporter and then as Associate Director for Central Programming. Retiring in 2006, Mr. Lipien soon after started the website FreeMediaOnline.org to assist independent broadcasters and journalists worldwide. Responding to the cutbacks at VOA, Mr. Lipien launched GovoritAmerika.us, a Russian language site containing news summaries from U.S. government and non-governmental sources.

Mr. Lipien’s criticisms of the BBG go beyond disagreements over planned cutbacks. He charges that BBG market research findings have led Voice of America to cut back on criticism of the Putin government. Mr. Lipien has similarly charged that market research was behind a Radio Liberty decision to carry a program featuring Russian extremists, which sparked protests from Russian human rights groups. Lipien says that most of the responsibility for the cutbacks in Russian language service is the responsibility of Ted Kaufman, a close confidante of Vice President Biden who replaced Biden as U.S. senator from Delaware.

Lipien is also critical of BBG member Jeffrey Hirschberg, charging that Hirschberg’s business interests in Russia are “an apparent conflict of interest” with his BBG responsibilities. Hirschberg, a former Director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, is still on their board and is a partner and Managing Director of Kalorama Partners, LLC, a Washington, DC-based consulting and risk-management company. However, no specific conflict of interest has been documented and it is worth noting that Hirschberg is also a board member of the human rights group Freedom House. But according to Lipien, “in many ways, BBG’s business-connected members with conflicts of interest are more dangerous for journalistic independence at VOA and RFE/RL than the White House and State Department officials who in the past had also tried to interfere with programming for political reasons.”

James Glassman, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy near the end of George W. Bush’s term, was previously the BBG Board Chairman and led the effort to abolish the Russian language services. The board members who voted to abolish the services cited the decline of shortwave and the rise of the Internet as part of their reasoning for the changes.

Voices of discord at VOA Russian service?

However, other VOA insiders speculate that the reorganization of the Russian service may in part have been due to a reputation that it developed in earlier times as having a myriad of internal personnel problems. Former USIA official William P. Kiehl, the Country Affairs Officer for the USSR and Baltic States from 1981-1983, said of the VOA Russian service,

Among those who worked with, but not in, the Russian Service of the VOA, it was known as ‘the snake pit’ because of the internecine warfare that was a constant among the staff. The Russian Service like many language services then and now reflected both the good and the bad of the societies that provided the native speakers–so in the case of the Russian Service you had Westernizers and Slavophiles, monarchists and socialists, Jews and anti-Semites, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians, people with all sorts of agendas, all working together in a high pressure situation under the supervision of a Russian speaking Foreign Service Officer from the ranks of the USIA or the State Department.

Clearly, the diverse staff of the VOA Russian-language service – a product of the Soviet Union’s own complicated legacy – must have been a difficult one to manage. But it produced programming that was listened to by millions of Soviet citizens during the Cold War, and remained popular after the breakup of the USSR. This legacy has been interrupted with the changes to VOA’s Russian service.

The future of the BBG

Currently there are four vacancies on the BBG Board out of a total of nine seats. Secretary of State Clinton holds one seat on the board, but generally speaking the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, currently designated to be Ms. Judith McHale, sits in for the Secretary. Board members can serve after their terms have expired until replacements are named. Currently, four members are serving in this status. While traditionally, four members have been named by the Senate Minority Leader, and four by the sitting president, it is now technically possible for President Obama to remake the Board in its entirety by himself.

The Obama Administration has not given any indication who it will appoint to the BBG or if it will even keep the BBG as an institution. In both 2007 and 2008 the Office of Personnel Management rated the BBG as having the worst employee satisfaction level of any government agency. So new appointees will have their hands full trying to fix it, and the abrupt decision taken in 2008 to end Russian-language service may be impossible to reverse. There continues to be a great deal of uncertainty surrounding much of VOA’s work. For example, the Uzbek language service was taken off the air, only to be switched back on in 2004-5. It is now again being threatened with closure.

It is quite possible that the Obama Administration views the BBG as an agency in need of an overhaul. The BBG was founded in the wake of the dismantling of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1999, a move which reshaped – not necessarily for the better – America’s public diplomacy. At that time, most of USIA’s programs were folded into the Department of State. But there was a fear that VOA, RFE/RL, and Radio Marti (which broadcasts to Cuba) would be unable to maintain their journalistic independence under the Department of State. The concept of a bi-partisan board with governors from both parties appointed by the president, with a spot reserved for a State Department official, arose as a solution to that problem.

Today, questions remain as to how international broadcasting operations should be managed. As a Senator, Vice President Biden was among those most involved in the discussion. How the Obama Administration will approach international broadcasting remains to be seen, but it is likely the BBG’s many perceived missteps are going to lead to some changes. In these challenging times, America can ill afford such tumult in its overseas broadcasting services.